Quality Entry Door Replacement | Bangor Window Replacement

Therma-Tru's warranty draws a hard line between a single door and a door system. A slab swap hangs a new door in the old frame, while a prehung door arrives as slab, side jambs, head and sill built up as one unit.

ProVia's single replacement door mounts a steel L-frame to the wooden jamb already in the wall, so that jamb has to stay, and Andersen takes the opposite tack: its front doors are prehung only.

Our rule follows the threshold: a firm one under a square, dry frame will take a new slab, while one that gives under the awl needs sill and frame out with the door.

Therma-Tru's Benchmark install guide tells the installer to dry-fit a sill pan (a formed tray beneath the sill that turns water back outside) and warns against caulk under the sill once a pan is in place. Without a pan, Benchmark asks for three full-width beads of elastomeric or polyurethane sealant, with the shims set behind the hinges.

ProVia's full-unit guide calls for the sill flat, never bearing on a single wedge shim, plus a drip cap over the head and sparing low-expansion foam, because too much foam bows the jamb.

Where a maker gives no flashing detail, Maine's adopted 2021 residential code calls for pan flashing below the sill, and Building Science Corporation is clear that the sill should drain freely to the outside. Expanding foam is never a substitute for that flashing: the tape goes down first, lapped shingle-style into the house wrap, and the foam fills the cavity after.

The code Maine adopted treats every pane set in a swinging door as a hazardous location, so each one must be safety glass. A sidelight within 24 inches of the closed door also counts when its lowest edge is below 60 inches, and every one of those panes carries its maker's etched mark.

On the side that takes the January wind off the Penobscot, a solid or half-glass slab is usually the right call: ENERGY STAR's Version 7.0 asks for a U-factor of 0.17 or lower on an opaque door and 0.23 or lower on a door with up to half glass, printed on the NFRC label.

A new door's paint runs on a clock. Under Therma-Tru's current warranty, steel wants its paint inside two weeks and fiberglass inside six months on all six sides, and ProVia allows a primed slab 90 days before the finish must go on.