If you’ve got a storefront or a business of any kind then you’re probably looking for commercial glass doors. You may have found that it’s not as easy as just buying any other kind of door, in fact it’s often pretty hard to find any kind of information at all on the subject.
Luckily you’ve come to the right place. Today I’m going to talk all about commercial glass doors, what you need to know in order to find the best ones, how to go about purchasing them, what you can expect to pay, and even how to maintain them over time so that they last as long as possible.
I’m going to assume that you are building an office because that’s usually when people need to buy glass doors. I suppose you may already have an office with a glass door that just got busted and you need to replace it, I can help you out with that too. But for the most part I’m going to assume that you are going the route of new office construction here. The first thing to understand is that your door should be the absolutely last thing to go into your office. Why is that? Because it’s glass, and glass breaks during construction projects. The last thing you want is to have your door installed and then have the flooring guy carrying tiles into the office for installation smash into it and break it!
Where To Purchase Your Glass Door? This depends. Your construction company contractors may already have a source that they use for glass doors, and in many cases it’s a good idea just to go with it. People work with who they’re comfortable with and over time your construction crew will have built up relationships that you are sometimes better off not disturbing. Sometimes it is okay to go with an outside company if you’re pretty sure that the company your construction team uses is overcharging you.
What about a renovation job? I mentioned earlier that you may be replacing an old door and if so this is the part of the web site for you. Something that you absolutely have to keep in mind that many people don’t think about when replacing a commercial glass door is masonry. You’re almost certainly get have to hire a masonry guy to help with the installation because it’s not just as easy as slapping in a new door into the old frame. Many times the frame has to be replaced too. So a good drywall or masonry guy is gonna be important because you have to rip out the old frame and this will ruin the wall and have to be replaced. Make sure to hire a bonded and insured installer. Many times the door company themselves won’t install it so you’ll have to hire somebody. A good way to find an installer is to ask the door company themselves; they should be able to recommend somebody to you.
A quick note on prices prices will vary depending on the size the door quite obviously. An 8 foot tall door that’s around 4 feet wide is gonna cost you anywhere from $500 to $1000 at wholesale, and you can expect retail prices to go up sometimes as much as 50% or more. This means your door can easily cost between $1000 and $2000. I guess that’s a small price to pay to have such professional looking entrance way, but it still stings!
Where to buy you can’t expect to find commercial glass doors at your regular hardware store type companies like Home Depot or Lowes because they don’t carry them. I recommend you start out by discussing it with your contractor as they will probably be able to point you in the right direction. Unfortunately it’s not such a large industry that you can really shop around a whole lot. If you can find two different quotes from two different companies, consider yourself lucky.
Hopefully you found this introduction on commercial glass doors useful. I know it can be frustrating sometimes finding information on this exact industry, and that’s really strange when you think of all the commercial glass doors that you see day in and day out at nearly every business in America!