Custom Doors

As a homeowner, if you’ve been giving thought to buying a new custom door from one of the big-box stores, the following article will provide you with highly useful information on how to be an educated and well-informed consumer.

A well-crafted wooden custom door makes a definitive statement about the character of the home and reflects the homeowner’s taste in the style and personality of the people residing inside.

A custom front door is the main focal entry point to your home. It is the place where people are warmly welcomed as they enter your home. As such custom doors come in a myriad of styles, shapes, sizes and materials and are available from the big-box home improvement stores. There’s nothing quite like a luxurious, custom-crafted front door that welcomes you home and which serves as a showpiece beacon of your house. As such, you most certainly don’t want to go with a lacklustre one-size-fits-all outlook approach mentality to the entryway of your home.

TOP-3 Most Popular Materials

Wood

Pros: Having been utilized for thousands of years, it’s no wonder that wood has been the most popular construction material to use. And as such the most widely chosen for replacement doors. Wood is a renewable, environmentally sustainable natural resource. Being so strong and durable, over time it gets harder and as such will last for years. It has the versatility of being stained or painted to match any type of exterior decor colour. With wood’s low heat and cold transfer, it offers the best insulation value. Many homeowners prefer wood for its natural warmth and beauty. And upon selling the property it provides for a better return on investment.

Cons: Wood requires regular maintenance and will cost more than other materials. Maintenance will include cleaning, caulking, sanding, painting and staining. Wood is also susceptible to mould, mildew and rotting. If the wood is not properly maintained, it will succumb to sun and weather damage. A wooden door can be more susceptible to rotting as moisture can penetrate deep without proper maintenance. To learn more about custom door and price, contact the Canglow specialists.

Vinyl

Pros:

• Quickly taking over wood in popularity as the standard go-to material to use and being most widely chosen by Canadian builders is vinyl. It is a much more highly preferred material of choice due to its high energy efficiency performance and low cost. Once regarded as being “cheaply made”, thanks to the development of the perfections made in technology, this polyvinyl chloride (PVC) product is losing its shoddy reputation. However, bear in mind to be an informed consumer and to do your homework and investigate the manufacturing methods involved in vinyl material as all are not created equally and there are unfortunately some low-quality products on the market.
• Vinyl is the most affordable of all window materials.
• Vinyl custom doors are welded at its seams which prevents water and air to permeate. So, not only are they energy efficient, but they are also durable too.
• Energy-efficient— Constructed from a hollow frame, the internal void is filled with an insulating foam.
• Low maintenance makes vinyl a highly desirable material to use as it doesn’t require any continual ongoing maintenance and will always look great for many years to come.
• Vinyl is non-corroding and UV-resistant. The exterior surface is sealed with a preservative coat finish which blocks damaging UV rays.

Cons:

• Vinyl cannot be painted or stained to match decor.
• Inferior vinyl products can reduce the durability and insulation integrity value of the door.
• Although through time and the advancements in technology have allowed a measure of flexibility in the versatility of vinyl, there is still little room for customization, so it’s problematic to match more traditional architectural design styles.
• Vinyl can easily be damaged during the installation process and may potentially warp over time.
• Vinyl expands and contracts during seasonal fluctuating temperature changes. It is possible that the vinyl door’s structural integrity seals can be broken which will allow for potential air and moisture to permeate.

Fibreglass

Due to its traditional wood profile, fibreglass is quickly gaining in popularity. Requiring little maintenance, fibreglass is made with glass fibres and resin.

Pros:

• Strong and durable
• Has the flexibility to be configured to a home’s exterior door design.
• Fibreglass can match and resemble wood veneer patterns and can also be painted to match your home’s exterior.
• Fibreglass is resistant to rotting, warping and swelling due to weather fluctuations.
• Energy-efficient as fibreglass can expand and contract.
• Foam-filled fibreglass doors have the highest rated insulation value and perform extremely well in severely cold temperatures.
• Even if the finish is of a dark colour, fibreglass doors come with a UV-resistant acrylic finish which can withstand fading.
  Some fibreglass door models are available with stainable wood or a wood-like veneer.

Cons:

• A fibreglass door can be costly. Running approximately 25 percent higher than a vinyl door. Hence, homeowners tend to shy away from them due to their high cost.
• And while some fibreglass doors can be stained, generally they are limited in the range of colour choices, so you may have to resort to having them painted.

So while wood, vinyl and fibreglass are all fundamentally excellent choices in their own right, it’s important to identify what features are more important to you the homeowner. For example, when considering your new custom door, are you on a tight fixed budget? Will an overall energy efficiency place that high an importance on your ultimate choice of door? Also, it’s important to take into account your home’s aesthetics when matching a new replacement custom door to suit the architectural design style of your home. To reiterate, do your homework to become an informed and educated consumer. With a little due diligence on your part, you’ll have made a wise purchase which will give you many years of pleasure.