Door Replacement in Wilmington, DE

In Trolley Square, Forty Acres, and Cool Spring, the brick rowhouses date from the late 1800s through the 1930s. Most of these have a single front entry that opens straight onto a stoop and then the sidewalk, often with a transom above and no room for sidelights. Masonry is common. Brick doesn’t move, and it’s frequently a few inches narrower or taller than a stock slab. A replacement here starts with measuring the brick, not simply picking a style from a catalog, and the frame and threshold must be built to that opening. Get the fit wrong and you’re back to the drafts and the sticking latch you started with!

That street-facing exposure also changes what the door has to overcome. There’s no porch roof over most rowhouse entries, so the slab and the threshold take rain, afternoon sun, and whatever gets tracked up from the sidewalk in winter. Original wood doors on these blocks have probably been painted a dozen times, swelling and shrinking through New Castle County’s humid summers the whole time. That’s why a front door replacement here so often ends up being fiberglass or steel. They both hold their shape, and a multi-point lock in a reinforced frame makes sense on a door that’s three feet away from the sidewalk. If you’re weighing the two options, our post on fiberglass vs. steel entry doors walks through it.

Rowhouses have another quirk. With shared walls on both sides, the only windows are front and back, making cross-ventilation limited. A full-view storm door with a screen on the front entry is one of the few ways to move air through the house without leaving the main door open to the street. Storm doors also protect the primary door’s finish, and that’s more important out on a bare stoop than it is under a deep porch.

Move out to Westover Hills, Brandywine Hills, and The Highlands and the housing shifts to mostly detached homes, built primarily between 1930 and 1969. Here the door conversation is usually about two things: an original entry with a slab-and-sidelight unit that leaks air at the sill, and an aluminum-framed sliding patio door of the same age with tired rollers and single-pane glass. Both are like-for-like replacements in the existing opening. The patio door is the one homeowners tend to put off, and it’s usually the bigger comfort gain, especially on a rear elevation near Kennett Pike or the I-95 corridor where laminated glass can take the edge off the traffic noise. If the front door is in question, our post when to repair a front door and when to replace it gives you a great way to see your options.

One more thing that’s specific to Wilmington. The city has twelve City Historic Districts plus the Forty Acres Neighborhood Conservation District, and inside them any exterior change, a front door included, goes through the Design Review and Preservation Commission before a permit is issued. Trinity Vicinity, Cool Spring/Tilton Park, and Quaker Hill are among the residential districts on that list. We’ll tell you at the consultation whether your address falls inside one and what the review involves. Outside the districts, a front or storm door swap in the existing opening doesn’t need a city permit at all.

Weighing the windows too? Our window replacement in Wilmington page talks about the local considerations from the window perspective.