Condos in Northwest Portland.

The Vaux.

Parking Structure Bicycle Storage Room with an outswing door.

Apparently there have been some issues related to cars driving nearby or maybe parked nearby

Our mission is to change the door swing and alleviate the conflict. Note the electric-strike-plate that provides secure access.

Hollow-Metal Commercial Steel Door Jambs in masonry walls frequently require being cut out of the wall.

This is because the steel door jambs are frequently grouted into the masonry wall.

That is a piece of cardboard affixed to the wall to the left of our technician to keep from spraying the cars with grout and water.

Please note that the new door assembly now swings into the room, instead of out towards the vehicles. You can click on the photo to see it enlarged if you like.

Problem solved. You might note the Fob-Reader to the left of the door by which the electric-strike is activated (released) for entry into the bike storage room.

Clean Water Services in Tigard, is a water treatment plant.
They had an 8-foot tall Commercial-Grade Steel Door with a header-jamb that was pressing down upon the top of the door. It would seem as though the concrete opening was pushing down on the jamb, but we never saw any obvious evidence of it.

We would have to say that we have never really seen this phenomenon without being able to determine the cause. Anyway, this pressure eventually reached the point of creating an inoperable door. Several years before, we suggested they let us grind the top of the door to compensate for the conflict, which they had us do. Several years hence and the steel header-jamb continued to deflect down.

So now the powers that be have decided a new steel door & jamb assembly is the way to go. Above we have Steve Hilt having just loaded the door & jamb up at our warehouse in Tigard. You can click on the photo if you would like a little better view.

Accurate Concrete Cutting prepares for their part in this project, which is to cut the grout between the door jamb and the masonry wall.

Looks like a chain-saw.

The original door is removed, and the new door assembly is put into position and anchored to the masonry wall by means of Dynabolts inserted through the punch and dimpled steel door jamb.

Brandon Todd goes about showing off that he does not need a step ladder to reach the top of an 8’ tall door jamb.

It makes you wonder if he ever considered Basketball, but I am glad it did not go that way for him. Just consider how much money we save on step ladders.

On the serious side of things, we are really thankful for the many skills Brandon brought to the table when he came to work for us.
Note that we reinstalled the original panic device and even the original 6-inch X 27-inch lite-kit.

Speaking of the talent which we have had the good fortune of employing, we should also mention that the same holds true for Steve Hilt who is shown here preparing the concrete floor for a threshold installation by means of a hammer-drill.

Glendoveer Golf Course @ 148th and Glisan St. in North East Portland

The original steel doors behind the tennis facility have rusted out and become a functional & aesthetic liability.

But the original steel door-jamb is fine, so we measured the hinge locations and had our new doors customized accordingly.

A new removable center mull-post. New hydraulic door closers provided & installed.

But we were able to save them some money by reusing the original Von Duprin Model 88 Panic devices.

Another fine job by Tim Afonin.

The Janus Youth Program Street Light Youth Shelter in Southwest Portland. The programs have been committed to delivering innovative community-based teen parenting, college scholarship, hunger & employment issues since 1972. See www.janusyouth.org

We were first contacted in March of 2012 to inspect this aluminum door assembly and to provide a proposal to upgrade the door to a more durable commercial steel door.

As is frequently true, teenagers can sometimes be tough on things. Who hasn’t been tempted to communicate their frustrations via the exuberance by which they open or close a door?

And aluminum, being a relatively soft nonferrous metal to begin with, tends to show the mileage and the consequences of abuse quicker than your garden variety commercial-grade STEEL door, such as one would typically find on warehouse, a theater or a school building.

But it wasn’t until May of 2013 that the powers that be were apparently provided with the motivation (see photo above) to actually follow through with the upgrade.

And so it came to pass that we were contracted to provide & install a new door and jamb assembly that might suffer the slings and arrows of youthful indiscretions with a little more grace.

Even the original threshold was showing extraordinarily extreme wear and tear. You might click on the photo to get a better view of what we’re talking about.

We reinstalled the original surface-mount hydraulic door closer, the electronic panic device and the power-transfer that electrified said panic bar on the door.

Other than that which one might find on a submarine, a spaceship, in a dooms-day bunker or a nuclear power-plant, this is pretty much your strongest door. We’ve had homeowners who were burglarized employ us to replace their really nice wood doors with one of these nondescript doors.

A substantial upgrade in security to be sure. Although it’s rare in our culture to sacrifice so much “form” for the sake of the “function” of security in a residential application, we’ve been asked to do so on several occasions. So if you ever need one, you now know what type of door to get. Not to be confused with your residential-grade steel door.

Far West Fibers in S.W. Portland right off of 217 @ Denny Road.

Time to spruce up the original hollow-metal steel door assembly with a door provided by Mercer Industries.

Incased in a masonry wall the original door assembly is going to have to be cut out with a diamond blade saw.

Although we usually employ the services of a sub-contractor for this particular operation, our lead technician Jared Anderson tries his hand on this one.

Which served as an excellent reminder of why we usually employ the services of a subcontractor for this particular operation.

Two or three saws later…we found progress was unprofitably slow and quite challenging.

Samuel Johnson said “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.”

But we might add that a saw that works well can’t hurt either.

Check out the how sharp the steel door assembly looks with a fresh Powder-Coat Paint Job coordinated by Mercer Industries.

The finished product.

Portland Foursquare Church on Southeast Ankeny St. in 2006. The offices comprised of the older, original, though remodeled building.

Around back, off the gymnasium, a set of older solid-core exterior doors with many, many miles on them…sort of speak.

No doubt, the years of enthusiastic youth exiting the gym with vigor have caused the hinge screws to pull out of the wood doors. Through-bolts and after-market reinforcement hinges to help take some of the weight off those hinges has all run its course.

It’s time for a substantial upgrade to something that can take the abuse. We encouraged them to move away from the “vertical-rod” panic device (enlarge photo) which tend to be problematic and a real maintenance headache.

Looks like an older version of Pemko’s 177AV Latching Panic Exit Saddle Threshold. These things can often last forever, but we replaced it anyway, because with the elimination of the vertical-rod-panic devices, we didn’t need a “latching threshold.” Plus, a new threshold looks good with a set of new doors.

Once again, our plan here was to leave the original wood jamb intact. It really was in good shape and well anchored to the masonry wall.

The original closers were slated for retirement and to be replaced with LCN model 4041 parallel-arm-mounted hydraulic door closers. If you’re wondering what’s with our naming the brands and the model numbers…think “Key Words.”

In lieu of the vertical-rod panic devices we recommended the use of a removable steel center mull-post upon which the non-vertical-rod Von Duprin model 99 panics would latch.

If you need to move something large through the opening…like say “a piano,” the mull-post is quickly and easily removed and then replaced. If you enlarge the above photo, you may note the keypad locking device for exterior entry without a key.

If you want longevity, security and low-maintenance, there really is no other alternative that does the job as well.

Before & after shots of a door we put into one of those very old sheet-metal gas stations, where the sheet metal wall is about a quarter inch thick on the exterior.

So building out some rough-opening materials onto the interior surface, upon which we could mount the jamb was a fun challenge. I wish I had acquired more close-up shots.

The educational wing of this church in Tigard (Faith Journey) is in need of a couple new exterior steel doors.

To the uninitiated, these doors would likely look like your stereotypical commercial doors.

But to the highly trained eagle eye of your basic Anderson Door & Window Mechanic, there is no hiding the truth.

Well…actually, we noticed the stickers on the edge of the door that said Benchmark, the surface-mount residential hinges and the economy hardware, so we didn’t really need our eagle eyes this time.

Yeah, were trying to inject a little levity here, but we’re not sure it’s working. Anyhoo…our technician Phil McNair isn’t joking around, he’s applying his craft like the serious craftsman that he is.

Getting one of the two doors set plumb & square, he prepares the door for the new commercial-grade Hagar panic devices.

Seriously, the difference between commercial-grade products and some of the economy doors & hardware that are available to the unwary consumer, conjures up that old adage about being “a penny wise and a dollar foolish.”

After years of paying your maintenance man or someone like us to come out and adjust and re-adjust and retighten the jamb to the wall, the locks to the strike-plate, the closer to the door (for examples)…

…and replacing some of the hardware a few times after months or years of dealing with it really not working consistently, some folks receive that revelation of what that adage is speaking about.

Obviously, not all purchases are like that. But when it comes to something mechanical that we depend upon to keep weather and the uninvited out, having to do with something like these high traffic doors on a school, it might be something for the prudent to think about…don’t you think? By the way…the doors and hardware for this project were acquired from Mark Glass @ Mercer Industries. Call 503-526-3688 or e-mail: [email protected]

This is a building on the north side of the west-end of the Burnside bridge. In fact, this door opens out onto the sidewalk of the bridge, and as some folks might understand, security had become a factor for the property owner.

So our services were commissioned to eliminate the sidelight & the transom and to provide & install a new steel door & jamb assembly with considerably less glass in it. This was a job we did for Bill Naito.

The Well Church in Northeast Portland.

The original Flush Veneer doors have actually held up pretty well, given the exposure to the elements.

But the Birch Veneer has begun to peel off the doors.

And Von Duprin 22 Vertical-Rod Panic devices have proven problematic by always falling out-of-adjustment, as is typical of the economy series of hardware. So it has been deemed to be time to upgrade the doors and the hardware.

Other than some cosmetic issues that are relatively easily addressed, the original wood door jambs are fine. We elect to have the new steel doors made with custom hinge-locations.

This will allow us to match the original hinge mortise locations and to save us the added work of filling old mortises on the jambs.

As we often do, we advised our clients to move away from the problematic vertical-rod panic devices, and to allow us to outfit the opening with what is called a removable steel center mull-post.

This will eliminate the problematic vertical-rod panic hardware.

This will also facilitate the need to move large objects in or out of the church, because the mull-post is easily removed if needed.

This type of system is also more secure. We have heard numerous stories of unscrupulous folks learning how to pull out on the handles abruptly until the latches at the ends (top & Bottom) of the vertical-rod versions pop off of the strike-plates, making illegal entry much more likely.