How Security Doors Are Fitted to Older New Orleans Homes

If you own an older home here and have looked into a security door, you have probably had the same conversation twice. Someone measures the opening, goes quiet, and then explains that it is not a standard size.

That is the normal starting point, not a complication. Houses built decades ago were built to the dimensions of the day and have moved since, so the opening you have now is rarely the opening the house was built with. Settlement, humidity cycling, previous repairs and replacement frames can each leave a doorway slightly out of square and slightly out of plumb, and on an older house several of them have usually happened.

At Big Easy Gates, our technicians fit security doors on older properties across the New Orleans area, and the work is less about the door than about the opening it has to live in. Getting that right is the whole job.

If you want your opening assessed before anything is ordered, contact us for a free estimate.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, drawing on the National Crime Victimization Survey, reports that in two-thirds of completed household burglaries the burglar gained entry through an unlocked door or open window, and forced entry in the remaining third. A security door works on both of those, but only if it is fitted into an opening that actually closes and locks properly, which is the part this post is about.

Why Is an Older Opening Different to Work With?

Because almost nothing about it is standard, and the parts that look solid often are not.

A newer opening is square, plumb, a known size, and built into a known substrate. An older opening in this city may be none of those. It may have been widened or narrowed at some point. The jamb may be original, or replaced, or a replacement over the original. The wall behind it might be timber frame, old brick, or brick with render over it, and which one it is decides how the door gets fixed.

What Gets Checked Before Anything Is Ordered

The survey is the part that determines whether the finished door works or binds. What it establishes:

• The opening’s true dimensions, measured in several places rather than one
• How far out of square and out of plumb it runs
• Whether the existing jamb and the framing behind it are sound or soft
• What the surrounding wall is actually made of
• Which way the door needs to swing, given the porch, steps or railing outside
• Whether the threshold is level and sound

That last one gets skipped and causes trouble. A threshold that has dropped or rotted will not support a door that has to close consistently against a seal and a lock.

One more thing gets established at the same time, and it is worth asking about directly: whether the existing door is load-bearing in any sense, or whether anything above the opening is relying on the frame. On a house that has been altered more than once, that is not always obvious from the inside, and it changes how the removal is done in step 4.

Step 1: Survey the Opening Properly

Measure the width at the top, the middle and the bottom, and the height at both sides and the center. On an older opening those numbers will differ, and the differences are the specification.

Then check plumb and square with a level, and record the worst deviation rather than the average. Order to the average and the door will bind on one side.

Finally, probe the jamb and the framing. A screwdriver or an awl tells you in seconds whether the timber is sound or has gone soft behind an intact-looking surface, which is a common finding on a wall that has been taking wind-driven rain for years.

Photograph everything while you are there, including the numbers. On a job that runs over more than one visit, or where a decision has to go back to an owner, the photographs settle arguments that memory will not. They are also what tells you whether something changed between the survey and the installation, which on an occupied house happens more often than people expect.

Step 2: Establish What You Are Fixing Into

This is the step that separates a door that holds from a door that looks like it holds.

A security door depends heavily on its anchorage, and a well-made door in a poorly fixed frame gives up much of what you paid for. Fixings into sound timber framing behave one way, fixings into old brick behave another, and fixings into render, plaster or a soft mortar joint may do almost nothing under load. Finding out which one you have, before the fixings are selected, is not optional.

Where the substrate is doubtful, the answer is usually to reinforce rather than to hope. That might mean a new sub-frame fixed back to sound structure, or replacing a section of rotten jamb before anything else goes in.

There is a specific trap worth naming. A jamb that feels solid when you push on it can still be a thin sound layer over softened timber, and a fixing driven into that will pull a clean thread, feel tight, and hold almost nothing. The test is a probe, not a push. It takes seconds and it is the difference between a door that resists force and a door that comes away with the frame attached.

The same applies to masonry. An old mortar joint can be soft enough that a fixing spins, and a fixing landed in render rather than in the brick behind it is holding onto a surface finish. Where the fixing lands matters as much as what it is.

Step 3: Decide Between Adapting the Opening or the Frame

There are two honest routes on an out-of-square opening, and they suit different houses.

Adapting the frame means fitting a security door frame that is packed and shimmed to sit plumb and square inside an opening that is not. The original opening is left alone, which matters on a house where the surrounding trim and masonry are worth keeping. The limit is how far out the opening is, because packing has a practical maximum before it looks wrong and performs worse.

Adapting the opening means making the opening itself square again, through jamb replacement or reframing. It gives the best long-term result and it is more work, more disruption and more cost, and on a historic exterior it changes original fabric.

We walk through both at the survey rather than deciding for you, because the right answer depends on how much of the original you want to keep.

There is a rough guide that helps the conversation. The further out of square the opening runs, the weaker the case for packing it out, because the shims get thicker, the gaps get less even and the seal has more work to do. A slightly imperfect opening is a good candidate for adapting the frame. A badly distorted one usually is not, and pretending otherwise produces a door that never quite closes right.

On a house in a historic district there is a third consideration layered on top, which is what the surrounding fabric allows. That is worth establishing before either route is chosen rather than after.

Step 4: Prepare the Opening and the Substrate

Prep on an older opening is often the bulk of the labor, and it is where problems tend to originate when it is rushed.

Remove the existing door and hardware, and keep anything worth reusing. Cut out soft or rotten timber back to sound material rather than treating and covering it. Repair or replace the jamb sections that need it. Make good any masonry where fixings will land. Confirm the threshold is level, sound and properly supported, and rebuild it if it is not.

Then re-measure. The opening after prep is not the opening you surveyed, and the door is fitted to the one that exists now.

It is worth being blunt about why this step carries the risk. Everything in it is hidden work. Nobody sees the replaced jamb section or the rebuilt threshold once the door is on, which makes it the easiest part of the job to shortcut and the part that decides how the door behaves in three years. Ask what prep is included in a quotation, because that is usually where two quotations for the same door differ.

Step 5: Fit the Frame, Then Hang the Door

The frame goes in first and it goes in plumb, square and level, packed at the fixing points so the packing carries load rather than sitting loose.

Fixings go into the structure that was identified in step 2, at the spacing the door requires. The fixing points around the lock and the hinges matter most, because that is where force is transferred if anyone ever tries the door. A frame that is well fixed everywhere except beside the lock has a weak point exactly where it counts.

Only once the frame is right does the door itself get hung, adjusted, and checked through its full swing.

Getting the sequence the wrong way round is a common and expensive mistake. A door hung into a frame that has not been properly set will be adjusted repeatedly to compensate for the frame, and it will never fully settle, because the adjustment is being asked to fix something it cannot reach. Time spent getting the frame plumb and square is time not spent chasing a door that binds.

Step 6: Set Up the Lock, the Seal and the Swing

The last step is the one that decides whether the household actually uses the door.

The door should close under its own weight without being pulled or lifted, latch without force, and lock without the key having to be wiggled. The seal should meet evenly along its length rather than at one corner. The door should clear the porch, the steps, any railing, and the screen or storm arrangement that is already there, through its whole arc.

If any of that needs force, it gets adjusted now rather than left. A security door that is awkward to lock is a security door that ends up unlocked, which takes you straight back to the finding at the top of this post.

For the security features themselves, and which ones are worth specifying, our earlier piece on what to look for in a door covers that ground, and this post has stayed on the fitting instead.

Have the Opening Surveyed Before You Order a Door

The measurement is the specification on an older house. A security door ordered to a nominal size, fitted into an opening that is out of square, over a threshold that has dropped, and fixed into a substrate nobody identified, will look right for a while and then stop closing properly.

Everything above is answerable in a single visit, and what that visit finds is what determines the real scope of the work. Better to know that before anything is ordered.

Here at Big Easy Gates, we are New Orleans based and locally owned, we fit security doors and security windows on residential and commercial properties from the city out to Slidell, and our estimates are free. Call us at (504) 547-6364 to book a survey.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a security door be fitted to a non-standard opening?

Yes, and on older properties that is the normal situation rather than the exception. The door is either packed and shimmed into the existing opening or the opening is squared up first, and which route suits your house is decided at the survey.

Will fitting a security door damage the original door frame or trim?

It depends on the route taken. Adapting the frame leaves the surrounding trim and masonry largely intact, which is usually the preference on a house with original fabric worth keeping. Squaring up the opening changes more, which is why the choice is made with you rather than for you.

How do you know what the wall is made of behind the jamb?

By checking rather than assuming, which is part of the survey. The substrate decides the fixings, and fixings into soft mortar or render do not hold the way fixings into sound timber or solid brick do.

What happens if the threshold has rotted?

It gets rebuilt before the door goes in. A door that has to close consistently against a seal and a lock needs a threshold that is level and properly supported, so repairing it is part of the job rather than an extra.

How long does a security door installation take on an older home?

It depends almost entirely on what the survey finds, because the door itself is the quick part. An opening that is sound and only slightly out of square is a short job. One that needs jamb replacement or threshold rebuilding is longer, and the survey is what tells you which one you have.