Most storefront doors are the same thing: an aluminum frame around a sheet of tempered glass, hung on pivots rather than hinges, closed by an overhead or floor closer, locked by a hookbolt or a deadbolt in the stile. That is good news, because the door is a kit, and the answer to repair-or-replace is usually the answer to which part is worn.
Start with what the door is doing
- It drags on the threshold or sags. Almost always the pivots. The bottom pivot carries the door's weight and wears out first; the door drops, the leading edge scrapes, and the lock stops lining up with its strike. New pivots, a re-hang, and the door is back on the line. This is a repair.
- It slams, or it will not close on its own. The closer. A closer that has lost its oil or its adjustment slams the door or leaves it standing open. A surface closer is replaced in an hour; a concealed closer in the header or in the floor takes longer and costs more, but it is still a repair unless the header itself is damaged.
- It will not lock. Usually the lock or the strike, sometimes the pivots that let the door drop out of alignment. Replacing a hookbolt or a cylinder is routine. If the door has to be lifted to lock, fix the hang first; a new lock on a sagging door is money spent twice.
- The glass is broken. Replaced in the existing door. Glass in and beside a door has to be safety glass — tempered or laminated — and an insulated unit if the door had one. Nothing else about the door needs to change.
- Air and water come in. Weatherstrip, the sweep and the threshold. Worn weatherstrip is inexpensive; a threshold that has cracked or lifted is replaced with the door off, and it is still a repair.
When replacement is the honest answer
A door leaf is replaced when the aluminum itself has failed: a bottom rail cracked at the corner, a stile bent by a cart or a vehicle, corners that have worked loose so the door is out of square and every adjustment fights the last. It is also replaced when several parts are worn at once — pivots, closer and lock on a door that is twenty years old — and the sum of the repairs comes close to a new leaf, which drops into the existing frame and takes the existing closer and lock if they are sound.
The frame is replaced when the frame has moved: racked by settlement, hit hard enough to bend the jamb, or corroded at the floor where the sill has held water for years. That is the expensive version, because it involves the glass beside the door, and it is the one worth confirming before anyone quotes it. A door that only drags is not a frame problem.
Two things worth doing while the door is open
If the door is coming apart anyway, ask about the bottom rail. Accessibility guidelines look for a smooth surface on the push side for the bottom ten inches of the door, and older narrow-stile doors do not have it; a new leaf or a rail kit can. And if the door has single-pane glass, an insulated unit in the same door cuts the draft under the counter on a January morning and the heat in July.
What a quote should say
Which parts are being replaced, by name — pivots, closer, lock, glass, threshold — or that the leaf or the frame is, and why. A quote for a whole new door that does not say what was wrong with the old one has not looked at it. Ask how long the door will be off, because a storefront with no door is a storefront with somebody standing in it, and most repairs are done with the door back on the same visit.
How we call it
We look at the pivots, the closer, the glass, the frame and the threshold in that order, because that is the order of cost, and we tell you what the door needs and what it merely could have. Most storefront doors we see are repairs. When one is not, we say why, in writing, in a free estimate — and the visit is same-day when the schedule allows, because a door that will not lock is not something a store should close early over.