Storefront Doors in Norcross, for busy strip-center shops.

Much of the retail in Norcross sits in strip centers along Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Buford Highway: grocery markets, bakeries, restaurants, phone shops and travel agents, many of them open from early morning to late at night. In centers like these the landlord often leaves the entrance door to the tenant, so when the door drags, will not latch or has a cracked pane, the owner pays for it and wants the job done between closing and opening.

The Buford Highway and Jimmy Carter Boulevard markets that receive through the front door are hard on it: carts, pallets and hand trucks bend the bottom rail, wear the pivots and break the seal at the threshold. A replacement door for an entrance like that is often better as a medium or wide stile with a kick plate, which takes a standard lock and stands up to the knocks a narrow stile does not.

Downtown Norcross is a different street. The older buildings along South Peachtree Street and Thrasher Street have storefront openings that were not built for a modern aluminum door. We measure the opening, tell you what will fit it, and say plainly when a stock door will not.

A shop that has been broken into through the front door usually asks how to keep it from happening again. On a narrow-stile aluminum door the weak points are the lock and the glass: a hook-bolt lock, whose bolt swings out and hooks behind the strike so the door cannot be pried off it, and a guard around the cylinder make the door harder to pry, and laminated glass is slower to break through. We look at how the door was opened and suggest only the changes that answer it.