Installing A Metal Security Screen Door

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You can’t use flow through ventilation in your house if you can’t open the doors and windows.  This is a short story about our adventure when trying to purchase a security screen door.

We didn’t really know anything about these doors, except we needed one.  We currently have no screen door of any kind on our front door and, since we live way out in the country, we don’t really want to invite the local wildlife to “come on in.”  So, we drove into town to our “local” Home Depot (52 miles each way) and made our way back to the door area. We were looking at the doors and deciding on a color when three Home Depot people came up and offered to help.  (A good looking female friend of ours was with us, and that may have been what garnered all the attention…)

Anyway, the door that they have hanging up for demonstration purposes shows only a partial metal frame – a metal square tube only on the hinge side of the door. Knowing absolutely nothing about these doors, but knowing enough to realize the door wouldn’t be very secure unless the metal frame extended all the way around the door, we asked if the rest of the frame came with the door.  (Please keep in mind that one of the people that offered to help was actually the full time person from the door and window department.) The door and window guy offered no help, as he was too busy flirting. One of the other guys said he didn’t think the door came with anything but what was shown on the example door.

This is where logic diverted from realty. When we asked where to find the square metal tubing that matched the existing piece, so we could make the rest of the frame, all we got from all three of them was blank stares.  One of them (not the door “expert”) finally broke the silence and said, “Oh.  You just need a part that’s over in my area,” and he took us over to the department with the door knobs and locksets and pointed us to a flimsy piece of metal that is meant to wrap around a deadbolt or latch mechanism in the door to help prevent the doorknob from popping off when the door is kicked in.  This was so wrong on so many levels we, even as security door novices, realized we had to go home and do some more research before coming back and just buying what we truly needed.

Please find below the installation instruction for the exact door (different color) we were looking to buy – and you’ll see why we looked elsewhere for true expertise.

Turns out everything we were asking about comes standard with the door. The door is packaged in such a way that it isn’t possible to look at the package and determine those pieces come with the door and we weren’t able to pull the door all the way out to read the entire box at the store.  Hope the helps someone!  (We’ll add a paragraph about how the installation went after we complete it next weekend.)