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Therma-Tru Home Additions & ADU: The West Palm Beach Owner’s Guide
When a Therma-Tru product is part of your West Palm Beach home addition or ADU project, you need a contractor who can work with the exact door and frame specs rather than forcing a generic opening. We install and build around Therma-Tru doors, frames, and hardware on home additions and accessory dwelling units throughout West Palm Beach, with most projects landing between $45,000 and $130,000 depending on square footage, finish level, and site conditions. The work starts with a written price before any tools come out, so you know the door, the framing, the labor, and the finish cost before you commit. Here’s what you need to know about matching Therma-Tru products to your West Palm Beach addition or ADU.
Which Therma-Tru Models This Applies To
Therma-Tru builds entry doors, patio doors, and sidelight systems across several lines, and each has different rough-opening and frame-depth requirements. The most common product families we work with on West Palm Beach additions and ADUs are the Classic-Craft, Fiber-Classic, and Smooth-Star lines, plus the Benchmark patio door series. Each line uses a different fiberglass skin thickness and frame jamb width, which changes the rough opening by a half-inch or more.
Here’s the compatibility gotcha most homeowners never hear about until the framing is wrong: Therma-Tru frame depths are built for standard 2×4 or 2×6 wall construction, but a West Palm Beach ADU on a raised foundation or with thicker stucco over block will often need a custom jamb extension. We measure the actual wall depth on site before the door is ordered. Guessing at this step means the door arrives and the interior trim won’t sit flush. On the OEM-versus-aftermarket question: for door slabs and frames, we recommend OEM Therma-Tru wherever possible because the hinge mortises and weatherstrip grooves are cut to exact factory pattern. For door hardware and thresholds, there are quality aftermarket options that match or beat OEM performance at a lower price, and we’ll show you those options in the written quote.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Therma-Tru Home Additions & ADU Needs Attention
- The door rubs at the top or latch side in summer. Florida humidity swells door frames, and a Therma-Tru slab that was trimmed too tight to the jamb will bind from May through October. It’s usually a hinge adjustment or a slight re-shim, not a new door.
- Water stains appear at the bottom corners of the jamb. In West Palm Beach downpours, water drives against the threshold, and a worn or improperly sealed sill pan lets it wick into the subfloor. This is the number one cause of rot we find behind ADU entries.
- The sweep is brittle and cracked. UV and salt air eat through the rubber door sweep in two to four years. A failing sweep lets in hot air, rain, and palmetto bugs. This is a fifteen-minute fix with the right Therma-Tru replacement profile.
- Sidelights fog between the panes. That’s a failed insulated glass seal. It will not dry out on its own, and the glass unit needs to be ordered to the exact Therma-Tru sash size. We take the measurement from the existing sash, not from a catalog number.
- The door sags and the top reveal is uneven. Worn hinges or a settling rough opening will pull the slab out of square. Left alone, the latch stops engaging, which is a security problem on an ADU you’re renting or housing family in.
See the difference
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After
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AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
For Therma-Tru work within a West Palm Beach home addition or ADU, the budget follows the scope. A single entry door replacement with frame and hardware typically runs $1,800 to $4,500 installed. Adding a Therma-Tru sidelight system or a patio door to your ADU plan lands between $3,500 and $8,000. Full home additions, where the Therma-Tru door is one element of a larger project, run $45,000 to $130,000, and ADU construction runs $90,000 to $220,000.
What drives the range: wall depth and frame extension needs, whether the existing rough opening is square or needs re-framing, the door line you choose, and hardware finish. Every quote from us includes the labor, the door and frame by brand and model number, trim, weather-sealing, haul-away of the old unit, and the cost of the clean-up before the crew leaves. It’s itemized on paper before any work starts. And the 365-Day Done Right Promise stays on the job for a full year after the door closes and locks the first time.
DIY or Call Us?
Replacing a Therma-Tru door on a framed addition is not a small Saturday project. The slab can weigh over 100 pounds, the rough opening has to be within an eighth of an inch, and a mis-hung door in West Palm Beach rain will leak within months. What an owner can safely check: the sweep for cracks, the screws on the hinge leaves, and the reveal gap around the slab to see if it’s uniform. If the door is binding, leaking, or sagging, the fix involves leveling the jamb and resetting the threshold, and it’s the kind of work where one wrong shim means the door never seals right again. We’re happy to look at it and give you a written answer. Call (728) 203-3270, and Graham or one of the team will walk you through what you’re seeing.
FAQs
A Therma-Tru fiberglass door slab itself lasts 25 years or more, but the weatherstripping, sweep, and finish need attention every 3 to 5 years in Florida’s heat and salt air. The frame lasts as long as the wall does, provided the sill was flashed right on day one.
Hinges, sweeps, weatherstripping, and threshold caps are routine repairs we do the same visit. A cracked fiberglass skin or a failed insulated glass unit in a sidelight means ordering a new component. Call (728) 203-3270 and describe what you’re seeing; we’ll tell you honestly which one it is.
A single entry door replacement with the frame takes four to six hours on site. A sidelight system or patio door can run a full day. If we’re working the door in as part of a larger West Palm Beach addition, we sequence it so the opening is weather-tight by the end of the day we set it.
We keep common sweeps, weatherstripping, hinges, and threshold caps on the truck, and we order door slabs and sidelight glass to the exact Therma-Tru model and size we measure on site. We also work with the same care around KraftMaid cabinets, Cambria countertops, and Silestone surfaces when the project calls for them.
If your Therma-Tru addition or ADU door is binding, leaking, or just not closing the way it did when it was new, call (728) 203-3270 for a free estimate. We’ll put the price in writing and then do exactly that.
Written by Graham Stein, Owner, Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach at Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach, serving West Palm Beach and nearby areas.
