First of all, buying something as expensive to ship as doors from anyone other than a local company is a really bad idea. Shame on me. The doors showed up damaged and the door company and the freight company pointed the finger at each other and left me screwed. The doors that did make it intact were garbage. Even the "high end" ones. The poplar doors delaminated (crappy Chinese plywood anyone ?) after aplication of OIL BASED primer. When I called they told me, " You should have told us you were going to paint them. We would have used a different adhesive." Who doesn' paint poplar doors? Now I have all this labor invested in the surviving doors. When I asked for my money back, they offered me $100 on a $3000 order. They then sent me a legal agreement: double spaced lawyereese. Think they have been through this before. The mission oak doors were disappointing as well. They are assembled with screws, and rather than veneer over the plugs, they are visible. Do yourself a favor. Stay away from Homestead Doors

installing a prehung door is not all that dificult. It does take longer than you would expect. Pick a spell of good weather. You will almost certainly not have your first door installed in one day. fit the doorsil to the frame before you start. You may need to trim off the bottoms of the frame. You'll need a helper to stand on the other side of the door to stop it from falling inward. fasten the frame in with 3" screws. You will be removing them several times to get the frame straight. get 2 or 3 bundles of shims. A 2' long level is required. start with the hinge side get it straight fore and aft and side to side. line up flush with the inside wall as best you can. make the frame true even if the wall is slanted. Also keep it square to the opening. It's real easy to get the frame "twisted". fasten the top and latch side, keeping an even gap between the frame and door. At this point the door should open and close easily, and should remain where it is placed when it's partialy open. It should contact the frame/weatherstriping evenly all the way around. If it doesn't, remove some screws and adjust the frame position. When you're sure the door is right, and is mounted solid, replace some/all of the screws (one at a time) with some 3" stainless steel or coated exterior screws. replace at least 2 of the screws in each hinge with 2 1/2 or 3" long screws into the house frame. If your door is not hardwood, replace a couple of screws in each hinge on the door side with 1 1/2 or 2" long coated steel or stainless screws. fill in behind the frame with expanding foam, a little at a time! This stuff will expand and warp your frame if you try to fill in completely all at once. Your door is now pretty much weather tight, break out the beer and let the trim wait til next weekend.

When I ordered the complete new sweep, I also ordered a replacement rib insert, just in case. I took off the existing sweep today, uncrimped the ends, took out the old insert, and replaced it with the new one, trimmed to size. I didn't re-crimp the ends because it's in there pretty snugly and I don't want to have to uncrimp again. Existing sweep is back in place and I didn't have to add five more screw holes at the bottom of my door. It's a bit snug at the threshold right now, but I think it will compress a bit. It's possible my original insert shredded so quickly because it passed over a little cotton rug I usually put just inside the door. That isn't going to work anymore. No more daylight under the door. Quick fix: $5-ish, no new holes in entry door, so easy a baby could do it.

Just stay on top of it, In cases like this if you don't hear from them a day or 2 you have to file a charge dispute right away, because the longer you wait the harder will be hard to collect and they will say "it's been 6 weeks anything could happen to that door within that time" Good luck