Your stereotypical Pella wood sliding patio door, needs the inevitable roller-replacement that comes with years of use.

But there is nothing typical about removing the original roller chassis.

Finding what looks like screws coming down from ABOVE the roller-chassis, we begin disassembly of the door rail from above the rollers.

Sure enough, there’s one of the screw-heads right there between the top of the bottom-rail, and the insulated glass unit. Certainly not something you see every day. (You may need to enlarge the photo to see the screw.)

And so, since the insulated glass unit is going to have to be temporarily removed, we go about removing all the overlapping wood-sticking that holds the glass to the door.

This photo shows you the one-piece METAL sub-structure Pella uses (see RED arrows) to hold the primary stile & rail components together, which unintentionally prevents the simple removal of just the bottom-rail, because the screws go through this substructure from the glass side. Thus, the glass must be removed before you can access the screws that hold the bottom-rail (and the other components) in place. Pella’s engineers did not seem to be giving much thought here, to the maintenance headaches they were creating down the road for those who would eventually need to replace the rollers.

Our own solution to future maintenance needs down the road for this door, was to replace the original “single-roller-type” of roller with a “tandem-set of rollers” that could be “surface-mounted” to the bottom of the door. If you enlarge the photo, you’ll get a better idea of what we’re talking about.

This will facilitate someone only having to lift the door out of the jamb assembly to replace the rollers next time. Although, these tandem-rollers will probably outlive the door assembly.

The wood-stops are reinstalled with screws, to replace the nails Pella used originally (See Photo #5).

We would want to go on record as saying that Pella makes a top-shelf product. Certainly as good as any of the other major wood-window & door manufacturing contenders. They’ve all had their issues over the years, and most of them have learned to improve their products over time. Learning from their mistakes, as do most all of us.

Google Earth view of our jobsite this time. A well-secluded, high-end rental property in Gresham between Gresham Butte & the Persimmon Country Club. Yes, we said rental property, and it was vacant when we did this project in 2011.

But the most unusual aspect of this otherwise unremarkable project was the brand of doors, which we had never heard of before or since. The property owners told us these were “Mylch Doors.”

The little research we did resulted in our finding out that the Beijing Mylch Building Products Co., Ltd. was established in 1996. Mylch is located in the Capital Airport Industry District, Beijing, China.

It is a high-end professional window and door manufacturer. The main materials used in Mylch products are wood, wood with aluminum-cladding aluminum and vinyl. Finding a home page for this company proved futile.

But anyway, as to the project at hand…we were employed to replace the rollers on this rarely heard of sliding door. Our technician Steve Hilt is shown here removing the original tandem roller chassis.

After removing the original roller assemblies, we see a photo of the original “MORTISE.” A mortise is a hole or recess cut into a part, designed to receive a corresponding product such as a hinge, a strike-plate or other item. In this case, it is a “roller chassis” that sits in the indentation.

And here, if you enlarge the photo by clicking upon it, you can see the new chassis as compared to the original. The most important difference being that our replacement rollers are “steel” rather than “vinyl.”

Please do not attempt to ask us what these manufacturers are thinking when they spec out vinyl wheels for these oversized doors with insulated glass, because we haven’t a clue. Also, you may note that the new chassis will require a deepening of the mortise into which it sits…

…in the bottom of the wood door panel, as shown above. Steve begins the process by employing the use of a spade-bit…

…and then finishes the prep with some chiseling action. Please note that we have the means to modify products if necessary and prudent. We really are mechanics.

A house on the N.W. Flank of Lake Oswego Lake. Originally designed as a guest house right next door to the owner’s home (not shown)…

…this little cottage has never been finished nor ever lived in for numerous years and for reasons that are private. As some of these photos will attest to, a lack of use does not forestall the degradation of some products.

In this case, we’re talking about the weather-stripping on 8 sets of double-entry wood-clad Pella doors. 5 sets of which are shown in the above and previous photo collages.

And so it was that our client hired us to replace the weather-stripping on all the doors and jambs in the S.W. (Lake) facing elevation of this house, which is where the lion’s share of inclement weather blew in upon.

And this is the reason why. Measures had to be taken to preserve the investment that had already been made. A.K.A. preventative maintenance.

The nice thing about today’s compression weather-stripping is that it can seal up the perimeter of a door or window quite well.

The bad thing about today’s compression weather-stripping is that it’s not as durable as one might hope, as evidenced in the photo above. If you click on the photo you can enlarge it.

What is an astragal? It’s typically the overlapping component that covers the space between two doors. Oh yeah, one more good thing about today’s compression weather-stripping is that…

…it is fairly easy to replace if you know what you’re doing and you get the correct product.

Our technician Brandon Todd goes through the paces showing us just how it’s done.

N.W. Portland near the intersection of Kaiser & Springville Roads.

If you enlarge the photo by clicking on it, you may be able to see the pocket door sitting askew out of the pocket near the bottom of the opening.

I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that we’ve done hundreds of these track upgrades over the past nearly three decades.

However, most of the tracks we are replacing are not the “BOX” type track such as this one was. Nonetheless, it was the roller chassis assembly that caused the door to dismount on this particular opening.

Technician Mike Stavish begins carefully removing the trim and other surrounding wood components that must be removed to remove the door from the pocket opening.

The door is removed.

Brandon Todd goes about the task of removing the original track assembly. Notice the shims carefully used to widen the mouth of the pocket…

…to facilitate getting his arm into the pocket to remove the screws that hold the track in place.

The new track and roller assemblies are installed.

And the original wood trim and other finish components are reinstalled.

Obviously, there are many jobs we do every day that generally don’t attract any photo documentation for our portfolio.

But every now and then, if I’m near the area where I know we have a crew working, I might swing by for a myriad of reasons and take that opportunity to snap a shot or two of our guys in action.

Tuning up existing doors and windows is our bread and butter work. It’s also one of the services folks seem to appreciate the most. Living with sticky, leak doors and windows for years will tend to elicit that reaction after we apply some of our TLC to…

…make them work as good s or sometimes even better than they did when they were new. Wood doors tend to grow to varying degrees over the years, due to subsequent coats of paint, loose joints and/or swelling due to moisture. Most all homes settle to some degree, translating into door…

…and window openings that get out-of-square and sometimes out-of-plumb. Misaligned locks, sagging doors hitting the strike-jamb and/or rubbing on the threshold and worn out damaged and/or misaligned weatherstripping products are extremely common problems, all of which we resolve every day of the week.

You might be surprised at how good we are at it. Almost three decades affords plenty of practice, and I must confess, it’s fun to be really good at something.

Southwest Wilsonville within eyesight of the Willamette River.

An older non-clad Andersen sliding door & sidelight assembly. As the photos above show, the right end of this bank of windows are a bit exposed to the elements. You might try clicking on the photo to enlarge it.

Other problems our client pointed out were some sort of vinyl thermal-brake in the aluminum threshold had turned brittle and broken. The threshold also lacked adequate support beneath it.

There was also an alignment problem between the sliding door lock and the strike-plate.

Technician Steve Hilt going about the fabrication of new stop-material related to the re-glazing of the glass on the sliding door.

New tandem roller chassis for the operable door panel.

David Castro trims one of the door panels for a slightly better fit.

3″ gold-digger screws through the mitered-joints in the door panel for extra structural integrity.

Steve putting the finishing touches on the re-glazing process.

More mileage for these expensive wood door and sidelight products.

An 8′ Wide Vinyl Sliding Patio Door Assembly. You can probably see the problem even in this photo.

This wall, or this end of the house has substantially settled, throwing the door opening out of square.

And my technician Brandon Todd told me that this was with the rollers adjusted as far as they could be to offset the opening being out-of-square.

How far out-of-square you ask? Well if you take your tape measure from one corner of the door frame to the opposing corner, we are showing 121 3/4″.

When measured from the other top corner down to the opposite bottom-corner, we have 123″. Yep…that’s 1 1/4″ out-of-square.

So we pulled the door assembly, cut some 8′ long tapered shims to place under the door, setting the door assembly level with gravity and square with itself.

The good news is that this allows the door to fit in the jamb assembly as it is meant to do. The bad news is that now the door assembly really looks crooked as it relates to most all other surrounding structural indicators.