Residential

Retrofitting an Oversize Door in Structural Brick

A row house gets a new 900-pound, triple-glazed slider

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Brickwork

Before continuing the demolition of the brick beneath the beam, Danny wanted to finish all of the masonry work above the beam, given the fragile condition of that part of the wall. As mentioned earlier, this house had three wythes of structural brick. Most of the field bricks, or “stretchers,” were set in the familiar American bond, with a header course every seven courses. Header courses, in which the bricks are set with the short end exposed, hold the wall together across its width. In the case of a three-wythe wall, header courses alternate inside and outside every four courses, tying the inner and outer wythes to the center wythe (see “Flitch Beam for a Three-Wythe Structural Brick Wall”).

We started rebricking with the course immediately above the steel, which turned out to be a header course. We temporarily supported one section with scrap 2-by blocking while we pieced in others until all of the missing brick above the beam was replaced. Then we toothed in the brick under the beam at the kitchen window jamb.

We wanted to finish the lintel with a soldier course, but first we had to finish defining the rough opening for the new door so we could tie the brick together at the corners. We removed the kitchen window and the surrounding brick, leaving the outer wythe intact; this would define one side of the opening. The face brick extended past the inner wythe by about 3 inches, leaving just enough room to install a double 2×8 rough jamb stock fastened with Tapcons. At the other end, after removing the door, we reset the temporary Lally column just inside the new opening and rebricked the jamb, preserving the American bond and header courses. We left the old granite window sill in place because we didn’t want to risk compromising the structure by removing and replacing more brick directly under the bearing point of the steel.

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To provide a flat, level surface at the door sill, we built a shallow form over the brick and placed a stiff pea gravel concrete mix about 2 inches deep and reinforced with steel mesh. The plan called for the door jambs to be set flush with the new drywall, so we aligned the concrete flush with the brick wall on the inside, which would leave the door set back one wythe. After the door was in, we mortared a piece of bluestone underneath the sill to complete the threshold.

With the rough door opening complete and the beam still temporarily supported, we removed the remaining blocks from under the beam ends, added brick where necessary, and mortared all the joints. The final bit of brickwork was to install the soldier course at the lintel, resting the bricks on a shelf welded to the bottoms of the two steel channels. Now it was time to turn our attention once again to the door.

Assembling the Door

Because we needed to carry the door through two doorways with limited height clearance, Zola shipped it knocked down, but the unit had been assembled and tested at the factory. This is standard practice, because it would be impractical to lift a really large door into place fully assembled—the lift-slide model we were installing can be fabricated up to 26 feet long. Although the jamb can be installed first and panels set in place, we thought it would be easier to put the heavy panels together working flat on the deck. At about 9 feet square and 900 pounds, the door was still within the limits of what we believed we could lift into place.

The first step was to put the frame together. This time I hired four boiler technicians to help with the assembly. We laid two rows of doubled 2-bys on the deck parallel to the brick wall and more or less centered in front of the opening. Even though the door was shipped with protective tape covering the aluminum cladding, for extra protection we covered the lumber with thick movers blankets, then laid the larger fixed panel down, roughly aligning it with the opening. This panel had been shipped with the jamb still attached, so the next step was to add the other jamb and attach the sill to the jambs through the bottom using screws provided by Zola.

That was the easy part. Placing the active panel was a little trickier, partly because it weighed about 300 pounds and we had to carefully lower it straight down over the frame while standing awkwardly around the frame, and partly because the concealed wheels and seals had to be properly aligned with the track in the sill and also with the stile of the fixed panel. After we shimmed the frame to ensure that it was as flat as possible, it was a five-man job to get the panel into its proper position. We used a couple of pieces of foam to cushion the doors, and prepared for the worst. It took some coordination (and maybe a bit of luck), but the door found the track easily. We locked it into position, then aligned the headpiece with the wheels and seals of the active panel and fastened it through the top into the jambs.

Installing the Door

The last step in our plan was to lift and stand the door onto wood blocks positioned in front of the opening, then slide it inch by inch into the opening. It took seven men—two positioned inside, just in case, and five outside—to lift the door and stand it up. (The photo seems to show four, but the pair of arms under the guy on the left belong to me.) Getting it waist high was easy—getting it from there to above our shoulders was the real test. But it turns out we had more than enough muscle to stand it up without any one person having to strain himself. The door was solid and didn’t rack at all.

We had dimensioned the rough opening so as to leave 1/2-inch clearance all around the door. That meant we couldn’t tilt it into the opening—it had to go in upright. I had anticipated that this might not be easy, so I brought along four pairs of heavy-gauge 6-inch angle irons, which came in handy. After several short lift-and-slide maneuvers to get the door partly into the opening, we fastened two angle irons back-to-back on each jamb, inside and out. That gave us something to grab onto so we could lift the door and inch it fully into the opening. Before we started moving the door into the opening, we squeezed most of a tube of silicone onto the bottom of the door’s aluminum threshold, incrementally adding more caulk to the masonry threshold as we slid the door into place.

We checked the door for square and level, then fastened it with wood screws on one side and Tapcons on the other. We countersunk the screws into the jambs and finished them later with plugs and paint. To close up the gap on the outside, Zola provides aluminum strips that snap onto the jamb. We applied a bead of caulk in the gap before installing them.

Inside, we sealed the perimeter with low-expanding foam, then hung and taped the drywall. After reinstalling the pantry cabinet, refrigerator, and wine rack, we trimmed the door out with 5 1/2-inch one-piece molding. It met the cabinet facing on the pantry side, and we scribed it around the countertop and along the front of the base cabinet on the other side. Outside we matched the existing paint color on the existing brick using the Benjamin Moore “Color Capture” app, and mounted the sconce lighting.

Start to finish, we spent about four weeks on demolition, masonry, and door installation. That includes some downtime for inclement weather, a half-day to unload and stow the door, a long morning to assemble the door and lift it into place, and a day to attach the hardware, trim the door out, and add the bluestone sill.

The project was not inexpensive: The door cost about $12,000 (which the owner paid for directly, along with the architect’s fee), and my part of the work ran about $21,000. But as you can see from the photos, the dramatic difference the door made to the appearance of the house, and the additional light it provides in the kitchen, as well as the improved thermal performance and access to the back deck, made it more than worthwhile for the owners and their family (and their pets).

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About the Author

Rob Corbo

Rob Corbo is a building contractor based in Elizabeth, N.J., specializing in high-quality gut rehabs and renovations of inner-city residences.

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