I like solid wood doors. Anything else is just junk in my opinion, even though the fake ones are much more expensive. A wood door looks like wood, feels better, sounds better, and looks better. Yes, they are more difficult to maintain, do not seal as well, etc. But when you look at an old home and see a fake door on it, does not cut it to me. I removed a Therma Tru door several years ago and replaced with a solid wood door and have been very happy. It now has character. The Therma Tru door was too cheesy for me.

As a followup, we went with Lincoln Windows and I am pleased so far. Though the door hardware is not "intuitive". Hard to explain but I need to put a little slip of instructions to the door on how to lock and unlock until we get the hang of it. Wouldn't be necessary with most doors, I don't think. Oh well. They are aluminum clad. I chose the Berry color which is a dark, purply red. I would have preferred to have a reddish mohogany brown but they didn't have a color like that. Because of the aluminum, our contractor says we can paint them if we want another color which is nice to know. For now, I plan to leave them the way they came. I am definitely happy with the money savings. Now time will tell whether they are good value for the money.

If you had a contractor or door hanger install your door, and he told you what to purchase, and hung the door, then you were given the wrong information and the door was hung incorrectly. When you hire someone to do a job for you, they are supposed to be the expert, not you. If your person doesn't know the correct proceedure, then you are paying them to do a job they don't know how to do. When the inside of the house is on the same level with the outside entryway, then there should be no threshold to interrupt with the continuous flow of the floor to the outside and interfere with foot traffic. This is accomplished by using an auto-bottom. An auto-bottom is mortised into the bottom of the door. The door needs to be scribed about 1/4 inch from the floor. There is an adjustable neoprene seal. If your opening is too high then the header can be dropped or a custom door (not too much more expensive than a standard door) can be made. If the person that installed the door did not give you these options, then it is his fault, not yours. The cost to correct this should be on him.

I have a 'real' stone home. The walls are about 12" thick. You need to build the jam up with the wood of your choice - cedar / redwood / pine / pressure treated. If you want, wrap it with aluminum. The sides of my jam are pine, and painted white, the same color as the door. You may be able to use a stair tread for a sill. The entrance door swings into your living space, the storm door swings out, and there is about an 6" - 8" space between the door and the storm door. My sill is a 2x10 pressure treated, and I stained it.