Bilco Basement Doors and Garage Side Doors in Wilmington, DE

A steel bulkhead is two leaves on hinges, set on a frame that sits on the walls of the outside stairwell to the basement. Rust starts where the leaves meet the frame and where the frame meets the walls, because water stands there after rain. In time the hinges stiffen, the leaves stop closing flat, and the gap between them lets water down the stairs. Replacement means taking the old door off the walls and setting a new one sized to them, fastened down to the walls and to the house at the top.

Some outside cellar entries still have wood doors on a wood frame, which rests on the stairwell walls, where it stays damp. Once the frame rots, the doors sag and no longer meet in the middle. Rebuilding wood doors gives the rot the same place to start again. Replacing them with a steel bulkhead means removing the doors and the old frame down to the walls, then setting the steel door on the walls. If the wall tops need building up or leveling, that work, and who does it, is planned at the estimate.

A garage side door is an exterior door like any other, but it stands on the garage slab, with the foot of each jamb leg close to whatever water is on the floor. Soft framing around the opening is checked at the estimate. When only the foot of a jamb has gone soft, and the door itself is sound, the frame can be repaired in place. Splicing new wood into a jamb leg is a rotted door jamb repair.

When the door is rusted, delaminated, or past re-hanging, the answer is a new pre-hung exterior unit: a door already hung in its own new frame. The old door and frame come out. The new unit is set level and plumb in the opening and shimmed, and the sill is sealed to the slab.

A bulkhead is ordered by its size, so at the estimate Jimmy measures the stairwell walls outside to outside across the width, the length from the house wall out to the far end, and the height at both ends, since the door slopes between them. Steel bulkhead doors come in a range of stock sizes, and the measurements indicate whether one will fit your walls. If one doesn't, Jimmy tells you at the estimate before anything is ordered. He also looks at the walls themselves, whether they are cracked or out of level, and what the old door was fastened to. At the top, the house wall may be siding, brick, or block, and that seam is where the seal has to hold. At the foot of the steps, two things matter: where any water that gets past the door drains, and the door into the basement itself.

An outside cellar stairwell on a Wilmington or Claymont house can be walled in poured concrete, block, brick, or stone, and each takes a door's fasteners differently. An anchor that holds fast in poured concrete can split a soft brick or spin in the hollow core of a block. An old door may also sit on a wood sill laid over the masonry, which has since rotted. What remains of the wall under that sill determines how the new door is fastened, so it is inspected before the steel door is ordered.