Earnest Door Appreciation Society — a catalog of back doors
Door of the day
The Sun Valley Slider
Sliding door · 1972 · Sun Valley, Idaho (ski lodge service entrance)
The Sun Valley Slider is from the high point of American sliding door design — the early 1970s, when ski lodges and ranch houses wanted glass walls and the manufacturers responded with extruded aluminum frames that have outlasted three generations of vinyl replacements. The bronze track is the secret. Aluminum tracks pit and bind. Bronze does not. This door slides with one finger after fifty-three years.
Read the full entry →About the Society
The Earnest Door Appreciation Society catalogs, restores, and writes about back doors — the kind you walk through every day. Architectural back doors, screen doors, French doors, sliding doors, Dutch doors, pocket doors, barn doors. We have opinions about hinges, mesh, weatherstripping, and the proper way to square a rough opening.
The Collection currently includes 18 doors. The Practical Guides currently number 5, with more on the way.
More about the Society →Recently added to the Collection
- service · 1965The Anchorage VestibuleAnchorage, Alaska (railroad worker housing)
- service · 1908The Brooklyn FireBrooklyn, New York (former NYFD ladder company building)
- barn · 1887The Burlington BarnBurlington, Vermont (working dairy, decommissioned 2018)
- patio · 1934The Galveston LouveredGalveston, Texas (Gulf-front cottage)
- panel · 1851The Charleston PiazzaCharleston, South Carolina (single house, Battery)
- service · 1923The Coaldale DispatcherCoaldale, Alberta (salvaged from CPR maintenance shed)
From the Photo Archive
Practical Guides
The Society publishes home-improvement guides written by people who actually care about doors. Real measurements, real techniques, no affiliate links.
- intermediate · 90 minutesSliding door roller repair — fix the bind in 90 minutesDiagnose a binding sliding patio door, then lift out the panel and replace its worn rollers. The frame stays in place; about 90 minutes.
- intermediate · 60-90 minutes (before you start the door install)How to square a door frame's rough opening — the step nobody photographsA step-by-step guide to checking and correcting a rough opening before you install any door, with diagonal-measurement and king-stud-correction techniques.
- beginner · 45 minutesHow to replace screen door mesh — patient, frame-friendly, $20A complete guide to re-screening an aluminum or wood screen door, including the spline-roller technique that doesn't gouge the frame.
- intermediate · 6-10 hours (one weekend)How to install French doors — a real walkthroughA patient, practical guide to installing a pair of pre-hung French doors in a rough opening, including the squaring step every YouTube tutorial skips.
- beginner · 2 hoursHow to weatherstrip a back door — the four kinds and where each goesA complete weatherstripping guide for exterior back doors: V-strip on the stops, sweep on the bottom, magnetic on the latch, corner pads on the strike.