I’m a lumber retailer from Ontario, Canada looking for insight into the door hanging services offered by lumber yards south of the border.
Is this something you guys really use…….or is it a D.I.Y. driven service??
Can’t say as I’ve ever heard of such a service offered up here…apart from the door companies themselves!
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Replies
first - analyze who your dollar /profit volumn comes from.
If it is the DIY and you are competing mostly with Home depot, stay on this track.
If your current primary customer is the contractor, then you do no5t want to go into competition with him.
I and a lot of other contractors are not interested in buying from a yard that wants to compete with me.
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We are almost solely contractor based. The problem we face with ordering knock down door and frames (or even prehung ) is the turnaround. On top of that ..most of our contractors aren't happy with the workmanship. Home Depot is about 8 months away from opening their doors....and obviously this is a service they would not offer.
Door hanging services or supplying pre-hung doors and frames?
4 yrs ago in Calgary, most finish suppliers also offered unassembled hinged/ drilled/ doors and routered frames for an extra $7. I believe this was offered to the homebuilding industry and not the general public who were offered pre-assembled packages.
Gord
I'll second Piffin's advice. I don't want to compete with my supplier or subcontract from them either. We supposed to respect each other's domains and work together for our mutual benefit and the benefit of the clients.
BTW, Home Depot has been having lots of problems with their subs, the quality of the work and other things that are hard to control when you're not directly involved in the daily business of running a job.
Most of the doors I order come pre-hung. You can specify many options for both interior and exterior doors. Type of jamb, sills, trim or not, pre-drilled for passage or lock sets, etc. The only doors I hang on the site are specialty or custom doors and those are quite rare. One of my lumber yards buys the slabs and jambs and does the pre-hanging in house. Most of the others deal with a local distributor, Hutting, that does the same thing. Carpenters used to have to do all the work hanging doors, including beveling the edge. By the early 1970's, pre-hungs took over. The only exceptions we see these days are bifolding and by passing closet doors and pocket doors.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Now after reading your response and these other comments, I am confused whether you are speaking of simply selling a pre-hung door or going to the job and installing it.
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
We sell prehung as well as knock down(unassembled)...but we have to order them from a supplier! Contractors typically don't like the quality of the workmanship ....not to mention the long turnaround time and poor selection of hardware... ..so they hang their own doors.
We plan on polling them through the winter to see what kind of interest there might be. But first ....we're hoping to establish a base of knowledge on how it works in other markets.....or...if it works at all.
What we are hearing is that "door shops" are a pretty common approach in the U.S. Is this true?
Sorry about the confusion.....eh!!(LOL)
Interesting - some of my better pre-hungs come from north of that border, I am told. But maybe they get set into the jambs in a USA door shop
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
BTW, what do they consider a long turn around time to be worth complaining about?
I expect it to take 2-3 weeks and schedule the order that far in advance. Custom doors go up to ten weeks. Same thing - I know in advance that is the turn around and think that far ahead.I can understand some complaints about quality of the prehang situation
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In the busy season I would say that its about four weeks. Which....in reality ....assuming that most contractors are like you...organized.....is great. It's the one or two doors during the finishing stages that can hold things up. Even then....handling the product twice also kills us. Truck drivers ...bumpy roads..poor packaging.....storage....can also cause damage which sets everyone back.
We sell a tonne of knotty and clear pine slabs (cottage country we are) that door companies charge a mint to hang.
BTW........Patriots or Giants??
What R U - Kidding?My balls falls for the Patriots!
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!