The double french door diy project was quite an experience for us. At one point we just had a huge hole in the side of our house, which was very intimidating. We then worked diligently to install the door frame only to find out that we were 2 inches too short, so we then course corrected and finished the first part of the install minutes before midnight (our neighbors probably think we are crazy). That first night we were too tired to install a door knob so we had a WOODEN PLANK holding the door closed it looked like we were prepping for a zombie apocalypse. Overall we couldn’t be happier to finally have removed the sliding door. Double doors are so much easier to let dogs in and out, gives us a bit more privacy, and functions with the option to open both doors for max outdoor exposure. This isn’t really a how-to per say, we will just cover the general path that we took to install these doors ourselves. We will also provide cost breakdowns (in our project checklist), tools required and links to items we purchased to make this install happen.

🛠 T O O L S – we needed for the project [For a full breakdown of what we bought (with links/prices), click on this Link to our Project Checklist]:

  • Power Drill
  • Air Compressor and Nail Gun
  • Router and *Hinge-mate Router bit
  • Circular Saw
  • Oscillating Multi-Tool (not necessary, but since we had it we used it to cut the shims)

📦 M A T E R I A L S – we used (this may differ with your bench space):

  • Double French Doors (We got ours from a friendly neighbor on next door)
  • Door Jamb Kit
  • Door Shims
  • Floor Threshold (2x36inch long)
  • Door Hinges (we bought 6)
  • Door Lever and Deadbolt Lock (if you don’t have one already)
  • 10x 4 inch screws for door jambs
  • 4x 6 inch lag screws for threshold
  • Can Spray Insulation

🖌 P A I N T M A T E R I A L S – we used and bought (doors were originally white and we painted them black – if we were buying new doors we would’ve just bought black French doors – this is probably a future upgrade when we make it)

  • Angled Chisel Brush (link to the brush in the checklist )
  • Weather-shield Exterior Paint
  • Froggy Tape

📼 R E S O U R C E S – that we watched before committing to having a HOLE in the side of our house for extended hours.

📝 O U T L I N E – Below is the general outline that we followed to give you perspective before going into pictures and details.

  • Removed the trim around the sliding door (interior)
  • Removed the exterior trim (if any)
  • Removed the sliding door (ours was one piece, I would totally recommend doing this early in the day and once you have everything else planned out, materials/tools gathered and prepped
  • Cut the door jambs to size (the size depends on the width of the doors not the dimensions of the door frame in your wall – shims help with controlling the gaps between the jambs and studs)
  • Route hinge mortises on the jambs and doors
  • Nail door jambs together
  • Insert door jambs into the frame and use shims to level and space out the gaps evenly
  • Screw in jambs to the studs
  • Screw in hinges to the jambs
  • Install weatherstrips on the bottom of the door
  • Hang doors
  • Can spray insulation in gaps between stud frame and door jambs
  • Install door knob, deadbolt, strike plate
  • Install floor threshold
  • Reinstall exterior trim
  • Reinstall interior trim
  • *Tape and Paint 😁☀️ (situational)

So obviously these doors came from a find on the Nextdoor App. A local business replaced their French doors and we reaped the benefits! Nothing notably wrong with the doors, we ended up replacing the weather strips at the bottom of each door but everything still solid. It didn’t come with a door knob but we had a door knob left over after installing a new door lever and deadbolt on our front door.

D E M O D A Y E E E E

First plan of action is to see what you’re working with on the inside. We came to the conclusion that our sliding door frame was probably load baring, considering it’s an exterior wall, however because we didn’t make any modifications to the frame so we were in the okay. We ended up game planning for about a week before actually committing to removing the door.

I’m freaking out at this point, can’t you tell how happy I am?! 😆

D O O R J A M B – M O R T I S E S

The hinge mortises were one of the hardest things to wrap our head around. We first tried using a sharp chisel and a mallet, but I think the exterior door jamb might be pressure treated or of a higher durability than the wood we saw in tutorial videos. Then we tried the hinge-mate that we bought mainly for the router bit, but that didn’t work out well because of the jamb that we bought and the padding that it came with. We decided that the jamb being padded and already assembled out weighed the difficulty of routing the mortises. So we pushed forward and were able to tape down the padding and made our own template with a piece of scrap wood and a jigsaw. We clamped down the pieces (jamb and template) to the table and Ana was able to route out the mortises.

Did a final check to see if the jamb mortises aligned with the door mortises. We did have to touch up one of the mortises because it wasn’t quite aligned vertically but it was an easy fix.

D O O R F R A M E – I N S T A L L

We used a perfect 90 to ensure that we were nailing the jambs together perfectly. If you don’t have a perfect 90 you should still nail the jambs together for easier transport. When you shim and level it will straighten everything out.

The picture above is a bit of a learned hack. With only brad nails holding the jambs together it’s a bit weak. So we added a piece of scrap wood across and nailed that into the jambs. This made everything easier to move from our garage to our back door.

As you can see we wrapped up pretty late in the night, I was able to put the door knob and deadbolt on but it wasn’t working properly. We had to screw in a scrap piece of wood to BOARD UP our doors so no creatures/people could waltz in. 🧟‍♂️🦊 One thing we didn’t explain much was the shim process. This video linked here explains the process in more detail. It’s super simple, the main goal is to level the jambs vertically. In the pic above the black planks sticking out

F L O O R T H R E S H O L D

Body (left) and Toby making a guest appearance in the pic above. This picture does a decent job at showing what the floor looked after removing the sliding door. If you’ve removed carpet before it’s really just sub-flooring underneath and probably some adhesive. This might be the best place to talk about floor thresholds, we had to do quite a bit of research here. See pic and description below.

The floor threshold is the tread that goes under a door and it is partially inside but majority of it sits outside. It needs to be weather proof you need to protect the subfloor underneath as well. This video helped us figure out what we needed, we ended up using two 36 inch thresholds and used four 6 inch screws to hold them along with liquid nails on the underside and caulk to seal.

F I N I S H I N G I N S T A L L T O U C H E S

Taping the window frames is legit about half or more of the work to paint a French door. You can take the risk and free hand it (not use tape), however you’ll most likely get paint on the glass which isn’t the end of the world, but then you’d have to use a razor blade to scrape the paint off. In my very unprofessional opinion, use tape if you’re painting a French door (or any type of glass door <- that’s in reference to our front door which we will post about in the future).

In the pic above we sprayed insulation in the gap between the jamb and the stud. I would highly recommend that you open and close your doors a couple of times to ensure that it’s well shimmed and leveled. Obviously if the door isn’t perfect after spraying insulation, things could get messy and you’d have to rework the insulation part. I would say insulation is important for a couple of reasons; prevent heat and cool loses to the atmosphere and most importantly critters or bugs making guest appearances in your home.

After insulating we finished off the outside with a few exterior pieces of wood trim. These trim pieces are specifically graded for exterior use. We needed to thin the trim to be the width from our existing siding to about halfway into the jamb. The picture below show a better example of how we trimmed around our door frame.

Everything installed in the pic above, as you can see we wrapped up just at dusk. Tools are literally everywhere. We spent the remaining few hours here cleaning up and painting the door.

Ana couldn’t resist and she ended up finishing painting that night. You can see how much tape we used but it was totally worth the extra effort.

We absolutley love our French doors in comparison to the sliding door. Our family has come over and also commented that the doors are so much easier when letting the dogs out. We also love that we can open both doors at once when the weather is nice and when hosting it’s nice to have such a wide entrance.

Project Completed October 24th 2019