How can I rectify this?!

Hi,

Haven't been on here for a while (mainly because I've been busy).

This may be better posted in the DIY Disasters forum, but I'm hoping you experienced chaps might be able to help me find a solution.

Basically I've dropped a massive *******, by building the structural opening for my bi-fold doors too small, and have only just realised when going to fit them today. The height of the opening is 200mm short and I don't really have the option to make it any bigger...

Taking 200mm off the bottom would mean breaking out the floor slab, digging deeper down, re-doing the floor and ending up with a funny junction where it meets the house.

Taking 200mm off the top would require re-roofing because it's only a single storey extension and there's just one coarse above the opening (enough to cover the lintel).

The only solution I can think of, and I haven't spoken to the door manufacturers yet, is to get the door frames, glass and jambs cut down by a joiner/window manufacturer.

Does anyone know if this is possible/cost effective etc?

Thanks in advance.

no i agree it shouldve been posted in the disaster section.

gregers said:

no i agree it shouldve been posted in the disaster section.

Click to expand...

Thanks that's helpful. It's a good job I've managed to retain my sense of humour at this soul-destroying time.

200mm Did my old boss measure them for you

Speak to the supplier/manufacturer and see what they say, Get a quote for new ones and the price to alter the ones you have.

I expect you would be better off having new ones made and trying to sell the old ones.

We've all done it! Order some new doors, you should be able to sell the mis-measure to a builder on ebay or ask you supplier to let their builders/fitters know there's some cheap doors on offer, expect to lose £100 plus on them and buy yourself a new tape measure

Sometimes you can knock a row of brick off at the bottom and the internal frame height is still higher than the internal finished floor height, this could gain a bit of leeway especially if the threshold is tall eg. More than 1 brick height, then maybe take some off the head of the frame to shorten the outer frame, have a measure and see how much you have to play with

If the glass is hardened you won't be able to cut it down - it'll just smash into tiny cubes at any attempt.

Nozzle

Thanks for all your help on this - it seemed that most places didn't want to cut the doors down anyway and that the doors I've got have a unique extrusion profile anyway which nobody has the tooling for.

So, I've put them on eBay and it looks like I should make my money back anyway. Going to board up the opening today so that I can crack on with other jobs in the meantime!