An arched brick opening needs a radius door
From the street the opening is round. From inside it is square with the corners filled in. Hang a square door and you see the back of the brick.
Article
We got a call for a radius top storm door. The owner wanted to replace the entry door behind it too. Most people think a rectangular door will go into that opening. It will. Then you open it and you are looking at the back of the brick.
The opening is not the shape you see
Look at an arched door from the outside and the door is radius. Go inside and look at the same door and it is rectangular. The top corners are filled in solid, and that fill is what forms the curve of the brick.
So the frame inside is square, and a square door fits the frame. The trouble shows the first time the door swings open. The curve of the brick is sitting right there above it, and nothing covers it.
It is hard to explain on the phone. It is easy to see once somebody points at it.
We template it, then we build to the curve
We go out and template the opening first. Every old arch is a little different, and the template is the only drawing that matches it.
Then the door gets built to that curve. A brick mold goes on the outside and follows the curvature of the opening. The storm door mounts to that brick mold. That is why the entry door and the storm door are one conversation, not two.
We have built these before. We know how they go together.
When the part you need is not made
Another customer wanted an old school plank door with a radius top light about a foot tall, to match what the house had. Nobody makes a light kit like that.
That is not a problem. We have vendors who will make the custom piece with us. The door itself is textured fiberglass, and we paint it a custom color, so it reads like the old door without the old door's problems.
Most of our doors are fiberglass with composite edges all the way around, composite jambs and composite brick mold. There is no wood in the frame to rot.
Round, Gothic or just tall
Older houses here have radius tops, Gothic points and doors far taller or narrower than anything on a store shelf. We do the storm doors for all of them, and we build entry doors to the width and height of the opening.
If you have been told an opening cannot be done, tell us what you want first. Pretty often we can build the door to fit it.
Send us a photo of the opening from outside and from inside, or have us come out and template it. Either way we can tell you what the door and the storm door have to be.
Watch it from the shop floor.
A rectangular door in an arched opening
A custom plank door
Any width, any height
Sources
This piece is our own experience, from the shop and the job site. It cites no outside figure, so there is nothing here to source to anybody else.
Where this applies
- Custom radius-top storm doors, made to the arch.Round-top, Gothic point and other arched openings get a storm door made to the arch, supplied in Cleveland by an Arch Angle dealer. Send a photo to start.
- Arch Angle storm doors, from a Cleveland dealer.Arch Angle storm doors built to round-top, Gothic point, Tudor and other arches: full-view, 2-lite, self-storing or half-view, in eleven colors plus RAL.
- How to measure an arched opening for a radius storm door.A photograph, the width where the curve starts and the height to the top of the arch, or to the point on a Gothic arch. What to send for round-top and uneven arches.
- Doors supplied for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.Fiberglass entry units, wood entry doors built and finished in our own shop, and hollow metal commercial doors, from a door supplier on Cleveland's west side.
- Fiberglass entry doors, finished before they ship.Fiberglass front doors with composite edges and jambs: no rust, no dents, no wood to swell. Stained or painted in our Cleveland shop, with sidelites and transoms.