Door Replacement Ottawa

If your front or back door is drafty, sticking, or starting to rot at the bottom corners, you're past the point where a repair buys you much time. We replace exterior and entry doors across Ottawa — full door and frame, not just a slab swap — and we've done enough of these to know which shortcuts cause callbacks two winters later.

Signs you need a replacement, not a patch

A door doesn't fail all at once. It shows you first.

• Daylight around the frame when the door is shut, especially near the bottom corners or where the hinges meet the jamb
• A door that swells shut every July and shrinks loose every February — the wood or the frame has absorbed enough moisture cycling that the fit is no longer consistent
• Soft spots on a steel or fibreglass door, usually near the bottom rail, where water has gotten behind the skin and rotted the foam core from the inside
• A deadbolt that no longer lines up without you lifting or shouldering the door — this is frame movement, not a lock problem
• Visible rot or splitting in the jamb or brick mould, particularly on doors facing west or south where sun and rain hit hardest
• A door that came with the house and has never been touched — most builder-grade entry doors from the 80s and 90s were never insulated properly to begin with

If you're only dealing with a stiff hinge, a misaligned strike plate, or a torn weather strip, we'll tell you that on the phone and fix it for a fraction of the cost. We'd rather do a $150 repair and have you call us again than sell a replacement nobody needed.

Why doors wear out faster here

Ottawa puts a door through more than most cities. We swing from minus twenty in January to plus thirty in July, and that kind of range expands and contracts wood, warps veneers, and stresses the seals around glass inserts. Add road salt tracked in on boots and blown against lower panels by wind, plus the freeze-thaw cycles every March that heave concrete steps and shift frames out of square, and a door that would last thirty years somewhere milder is often done in fifteen here. Older neighbourhoods with original brick openings see this especially — the masonry has settled, and the door frame set into it has had to move with it.

What a proper replacement involves

We don't pull a slab and jam a new one into the old frame. That's how you end up replacing the same door again in five years. Our process:

1. Measure the rough opening, not just the visible door — this tells us whether the framing underneath is square or whether we're compensating for decades of settling
2. Remove the old door and frame down to the framing lumber, checking for water damage or rot in the surrounding studs and sill plate while it's exposed
3. Address anything we find — a rotted sill or water-damaged framing gets repaired before anything new goes in, because installing a door into bad framing just moves the problem
4. Install the new door and frame as one unit, shimmed level and plumb, with proper flashing above the head to direct water away from the opening
5. Seal and insulate around the frame with foam and caulking rated for exterior use, not the same latex caulk that cracks after one winter
6. Adjust hardware and test the seal under load — we check the door closes flush and the weather strip compresses evenly along all four sides

Most single-door replacements are done in a day. Double doors, patio sliders, or anything requiring masonry or trim repair can run into a second day.

Choosing a door

We install steel, fibreglass, and wood, and we'll tell you honestly which fits your situation instead of pushing whatever's easiest to source that week. Steel is the budget-conscious choice and holds up well but dents. Fibreglass costs more up front, resists dents and doesn't rot, and is what we recommend for most Ottawa homes given the climate swings. Wood looks the best and is the most work to maintain — fine for a sheltered entry, a poor choice for a door that takes direct sun and driving rain.

Where we work

We handle door replacement across Ottawa, including downtown and Centretown, Vanier, Alta Vista, Riverside South, Barrhaven, Kanata, Nepean, and Orléans. If you're in Renfrew or Arnprior, we're out that way regularly too — see our Renfrew door repair and Arnprior door repair pages. In Gloucester specifically — Blackburn Hamlet, Elmvale Acres, Rothwell Heights, and the surrounding area — we get a slightly different job more often than a straight replacement; see our door installation Gloucester page for what that usually involves.

If the damage is from a break-in rather than age, our break-in door repair page covers what we can usually save versus what needs full replacement. For sliding glass doors specifically, see patio door repair. For strata, retail, or office entries, see commercial door repair. City-wide supply-and-fit work also sits on door installation Ottawa.

Related door services

• Door Installation Gloucester — new openings, conversions, and framing correction in the east end.
• Door Installation Ottawa — residential and commercial supply-and-fit across the city.
• Front Door Repair Ottawa — when a repair still makes more sense than a full swap.
• Door Frame Repair Ottawa — rebuild the jamb and sill before hanging the new unit.
• Exterior door replacement after water damage — framing repair plus sealed install.
• Door Repair vs Door Replacement — when a repair is enough and when replacement is smarter.
• All Door Services — the full range across Ottawa and the Valley.