Are Doors from Lowes / Home Depot OK?
I plan on replacing my front door and two side lights, as well as the back entrance door. It seems Lowes and Home Cheapo have many choices of steel and fiberglass doors, but a few contractor friends have told me to stay away from these two chains for quality reasons. Even though the brand may be Stanley or Pella, they said the models have cheaper features, like thinner glass, shorter screws, low quality hinges hardware, etc. and they are not the same as the ones you would get from an industrial supplier carrying the same brands and charging 5% or 10% more. Is this true? I can't confirm or deny that, but it would suprise me if name brands would cheapen their product.....if true and it got out, they would lose more than they would gain....... What I know Home Depot does is have a house brand manufactured for them, probably BY the name brand guys and make it cheaper......I know the American Craftsman window that is HomeDepot's brand is that way......thinner vinyl, single strength glass, etc.....They did the same thing on ladders, they used to carry Werner ladders, now they carry Louisville, which sure do look like a Werner knockoff and I suspect are made just for HD ( probably BY Werner), since I've never seen them anywhere else.... What you REALLY DO have to watch is damage......I've gotten several doors from the BigBoxes that people have ordered, had delivered and they will be damaged, often severely.....If you get one, look it over REAL close for damage....... Also, if you have one delivered, good luck on getting the RIGHT door.......I was going to put a patio door in for a fellow, and HoemDepot delivered the wrong door 3 times before they lucked out and hit it right on the 4th try. Aother lady wanted a slider door and a 3/0 entry door replaced while I was doing her window.....they were supposed to be delivered when I got there, but weren't......( and for THAT they wanted $75 to deliver, about a 5 mile trip ), so I got the windows done, and went after the doors.....took an hour, literally, for them to find the doors.....on a cart ready to load on their delivery truck sometime......so I took them and she got her delivery money back.......don't you know that afternoon, the truck rolled up with ANOTHER set of the same doors......HOW do they make any money ???? And I've got a dozen more tales just like these...... We've had our fiberglass door from HD for about 2 years now and are satisfied with its quality. For some reason, though the bin it was in was marked 379.95, the scanner proclaimed it was only worth 149.95 so I didn't want to argue. We just bought a replacement patio slider from Lowe's last weekend; it's the lower-end Reliabilt by Wenco in vinyl. I'll relate the install details and my perception of its quality when we install it this weekend. It cost 320.00. I would have liked a nice Pella door with the cute blinds inside the glass and the self-closing screen door but just couldn't justify the 1500.00 investment for our modest ranch home. As far as damaged doors go, we thumbed through a number to find ours. Personally I think they come to the store OK but are handled roughly once received. I've bought damaged doors at box stores (damaged in ways I can easily fix) for substantial discounts, like 60-70% off the scanner price. All one has to do is ask. In the final analysis, one does generally get what they pay for. The difficulty these days with a soft economy (even though real estate-related areas seem to be still strong) is that everyone (businesses) is struggling to compete. Often the first casualty in this struggle is quality and QC. I'm finding quality slipping on even the mainstream, professional-quality products I use in my business (not construction). It's getting harder to find long-lived products in our throw-away society, which is something I miss. To answer the original poster's question, I don't know (but suspect) that quality is slipped a bit on the box store name brands. If the price differential is only 5-10% under dealer, I wouldn't hesitate to pay the premium, if only for peace of mind. I'd likely look for ways of improving efficiency in doing the job to pay for the materials I wanted. Making up 100.00 on a 1000.00 job isn't that hard if one works smart. Good luck with the project! Pat Somewhere else to purchase doors for a reasonable price and brand names is Habitat for Humanity Stores. They have gently used and brand new doors from contractors. They are half the price as in HD or Lowes. Thanks for the tip on the Habitat stores....I know the organization is building in our community but haven't seen anything like you describe but will look. Update on patio door installation. Door was about 1/2 too big for our vintage opening but I was able to mill a spacer stud (without compromising the integrity of the header supports, which were doubled on one side and tripled on the other) to provide proper clearance. As I suspected, the door assembly was racked so we had to tweek it a bit as we installed it. Overall, it went well and I'm happy with its operation. The kitchen is a lot quieter now and I don't feel the heat radiating through the door now that it's over 100 degrees most days. Contractor has installed the flooring and I've just got the stucco work on the outside left to do. Haven't decided whether to trim the outside out or just stucco to the unit and repaint. Likely will trim out in painted redwood or cedar. Living room picture window is next, after we recover financially Pat I've gotten 3 doors (2 regular and 1 double set) at Lowes. BEWARE OF SUB-CONTRACTORS. It took us 6 mos to get our double door order correct/complete/installed. It had to be special ordered 3 TIMES! We fired the original store and contractor after they failed to measure/order correctly. Too bad they had already installed our other door (shoddy and I fume over this daily even tho our next installer tried to correct best they could). Goto the installs desk and ask for their best door person. Then call that person and get referrals. I lucked out and got a great father/son-in-law team. They worked very closely with the mfg'r to ensure that my custom order doors were built to EXACT specifications. Happy customer. I went back to same store/installer and ordered my final door. I also now give that particular Lowes store all my Special Order business. BTW I have Rochman doors (division of Reliabuilt thru Lowes). Their quality seems fine (had my doors for about three years). Can't remember the lady's name in CS at Rochman, but she and her hubby founded the company. She's very pleasant to work with especially if you had all the troubles I did. Im very currious about this because I just bought 9 Anderson 400 series windows from Home Depot. A co-worker then told me I should have gone to a hardware store to get them because Anderson has a seperate line to produce a lower quality version of the same windows for Home Depot than they have for their other sales. I thought he was nuts, untill this morning I heard an advertisement for Gliden paint at Abucheon hardware. They said right in the add that the same Gliden paint at the big box store was of lower quality than the paint that Gliden suplies to other stores just so that the big box stores can guarantee the lowest price. So now im thinking if Gliden does it, perhaps Anderson does it too, and my co-worker was right about the quality of my windows... What do you guys think? this is a common practice among appliance mfgrs. I ran into this practice 10yrs ago at Best Buy, Circuit City and a local buying club. Turns out some of the major brands started changing their model numbers slightly for various outlets so you couldn't price compare (or price match) apples to apples. Some mfgrs also RE-branded their own goods under a different house brand name to protect their own good name (i.e., sell inferior goods to the big box stores and if they fail to live up to expectations or the big box stores failed to honor the warranties - as was the case - the major brand would not incur the black eye). SUCKS! I have been very happy with the doors I have purchased from Lowes. I did have to switch stores and installers after 2 horrible experiences, but I found a Lowes in my area that uncovered the real mess made by the first store and installer and they found me a wonderful installer, hooked me up directly with the mfgr and it turned out very well. Best wishes.
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