Door installation and repair in East Gwillimbury

In commercial work, nothing — hollow metal is what the trade calls a commercial steel door, and the two terms are used interchangeably on drawings and in quotes. A "commercial-grade" door means exactly this assembly: a steel leaf built to an ANSI/SDI level, hung in a steel frame, prepped at the factory for commercial hardware. The distinction worth making is against residential steel entry doors: those are an insulated slab in a wood or composite frame, sold as a finished unit, and they are not built for continuous traffic, commercial hardware or a fire label. They are a different product with a different price, and we supply those too — ask for the residential line rather than this one.

Aluminum for glazed entrances and storefronts where you want light, sightlines and a finished look. Hollow metal for security, fire-rated openings, and heavy-duty or back-of-house service doors. Many buildings use both, and we supply and install either — so the recommendation isn’t tied to what we happen to sell.

Often, and it is a large share of this work. The three things that decide whether it is straightforward are the doorway width, which way the door swings, and whether power can reach the head of the opening. Widening a doorway in a block wall or reversing a door that swings into the room are both real construction, not door work — so we survey first and tell you which of those you are facing before anything is ordered.

A primed steel door left unpainted at an exterior opening will, particularly along the bottom rail where salt and meltwater sit. The specification that prevents it is galvannealed steel — a zinc-iron coating bonded to the sheet before the door is made, which paint holds to and which keeps rusting from spreading under a scratch. We specify galvannealed on every exterior opening and stainless where washdown or chemicals are involved.

Plan on a lead time, always. Tempered glass cannot be cut, drilled or edged after it is manufactured, so every unit is made to your exact measurement rather than cut from stock — and insulated and laminated units take longer than plain tempered. That is why we measure before we order and why, when glass is broken rather than merely failed, we board the opening up on the first visit and glaze when the unit lands. On a planned elevation retrofit the lead time is a scheduling input rather than a problem.

Yes, within limits set by the listing. Vision lites use fire-rated ceramic or specialty glazing, and the maximum glazed area depends on the rating — the higher the rating, the smaller the permitted lite. Cutting a lite into a labelled door on site is not an option: the opening has to be factory-prepped as part of the listed assembly, so the lite is ordered with the door.