New sliding doors to the deck.

Here’s a sliding door I did for our house in Hawaii. The photos show the ugly original aluminum doors that always left a lot of nasty hardware in the visual opening even when the doors were “fully open.” So I removed all that hardware and cased in a new frame to accommodate new doors. They are made of made of kd clear fir to compliment the woods used throughout this classic 1948-vintage plantation-style home. The doors were trimmed with mahogany for contrast. The mahogany trim also created the stops for the big piece of laminated safety glass. The glass door hangs from a heav-duty set of rollers that ride in a track that extends five feet beyond the opening. The bottom of the door is secured with an oak spline set into a groove in the bottom of the door. The spline is secured with 6 set screws so it can be slid out the end for easy hanging and removal of the heavy door. The spline then rides in a groove milled into a full-length oak threshold.

The screen door hangs from a closet-door track tucked under a valance that matches the exterior trim. As a finishing fun touch, I incorporated the outside door pull into the mahogany trim. It’s all finished with four coats of spar varnish.

The reason for the 6” wide stained-glass panel at one edge of the door was that the deck was not quite wide enough to let me slide a full-width door completely out of the opening, so I felt a decorative panel would make the project look more finished (not to mention better planned) than to have part of the door sticking into the opening.

The finished project made a huge difference in the feel of the kitchen and its openness to the outdoors.

-- Skip, Forestville, CA, http://www.sonomastainedglass.com