Background
We had our house exterior repainted about two years ago. The stucco painting went well but not so for the south-facing fiberglass front entry door. The new paint poorly adhered to the door, resulting in numerous paint blisters. The paint contractor was terrific at handling repainting of the door. However, after three different attempts at repainting, the blisters continued to occur after each repriming and repainting. The contractor had tried Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore paints in the hope of avoiding the blister results. This door faces the south and experiences direct rain in the winter and hot sun in the summer.
The paint contractor offered a fourth and last repainting effort but acknowledged different paint compositions over time have made painting a fiberglass door more challenging. Apparently, other area painting contractors have had issues with re-painting fiberglass doors. Our painting contractor no longer recommends repainting weather-facing fiberglass doors and will not warranty such entry door painting.
What to Do?
The painting contractor suggested a longer term solution could be door replacement and avoiding repainting a new front entry door. At this point, we decided that this would be our best solution, but the next question was which door manufacturer to select - ProVia, Anderson, Pella, Therma-Tru, or Marvin? Another alternative was to visit our local Home Depot. Ultimately. ProVia was our choice as its Signet doors have a 15 year warranty on its manufacturer finishes and lifetime warranty for door frame integrity. No other door manufacturer offered this warranty. ProVia is located in Ohio and manufactures doors, windows, siding, stone facia and roof materials..
We were impressed by the following ProVia painted entry door features:
- Self adjusting threshold
- Hardware strike stile
- Dove-tailed stiles and rails
- Insulated foam core
- Hardwood door internal edging
- Four ball-bearing hinges
- 5-ply finish process, with oven-cured multiple paint coatings
- Energy Star Certification
Our new door was manufactured by ProVia with a PanoLock Plus multi-point lock, new handset, digital smartlock and a new peep viewer. We ordered all entry door components (and component installation) from ProVia. This approach preserves the warranty coverage as the installer did not drill additional holes in the door. Our door contractor was a local ProVia certified installer.
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| Source: Enduraproducts.com |
The primary downside of selecting a ProVia door is the cost. ProVia fiberglass front entry door are expensive. Our selected front entry door (presently the top-tier ProVia fiberglass door offering) does not have glass panels and we have no entry door sidelights. Nonetheless, the cost of the new door, multipoint lock, new handles, digital lock and labor for old door removal and new door installation can easily run $10k (depending on door size, finish and hardware). This could be twice as much as the purchase and installation of a Home Depot entry door. It took one installer about seven hours to remove and install the new door, with new interior three-inch door casings.
Note: I received no compensation from ProVia or Endura for this post.
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