Looking to get a new entry door! Size question.

[barneyz71]

I am looking at getting a new entry door from The Home Depot. The question I have is with the size of this door. First off my home is 10 years old and it has a 36" door with a 14" side light. The brochure for Feather River doors gives the width size of the prehung unit (52-1/2"), rough opening(53-1/4") and the brickmold opening at 55"). My consern is that my current door from one outer edge of the brickmold to the other is 57". And the brochure gives a 55" demention. Is that how they are getting the brickmold opening demention? From outside edge to outside edge? If this is the case then I will have an inch on both sides where my siding is going to come up short! Also the prehung size is 52-1/2" and my current door is close to 54" (hard to get an exact demention without pulling off the trim).
Do I have an odd size door or am I measuring something wrong?

[montytx]

Cant say without looking at it. We have simply ripped a 1x4 to fit the extra space on the sides then put brick molding over that if there was a problem with the new door being smaller. You also may have a sheetrock problem inside depending how wide your casing is.
If the trim inside is close to the edge of the door frame you should be able to just add 2" to the visible width to get a good guesstimate of how wide the old door is. It sounds like you are going to have about an inch on each side not too bad.

[barneyz71]

I know I will need to make the rough opening smaller with a 1X4 and will probably have some trim problems inside as well but what about the outside? The brickmold is going to be an inch short of butting up against the siding on both sides. Am I going to have to fill that with a 1X1 and just tack it to the brickmold?
And why wouldn't the door and sidelight be a standard size? I would rather just buy a new door and sidelight the same size as my old door.

[montytx]

They should be. YOu just need to spec it that way from who ever you buy them from.
One the outside you can do it the way you mention or as I said turn a 1x4 on its side flat and fill the gap then place brick molding over it. that should fill the 1" gap. Once you paint it it will look fine.