Warped mullions on French door
I have a French door leading to my backyard with 15 lites. I just moved into the house and the previous owner had a big German Shepherd that was constantly pawing at the door. This resulted in a few of the mullions being very worn down and a lot of scratches on the sides. My…
I have a French door leading to my backyard with 15 lites. I just moved into the house and the previous owner had a big German Shepherd that was constantly pawing at the door. This resulted in a few of the mullions being very worn down and a lot of scratches on the sides. My wife is nagging me to replace the door, but I’d rather try to fix it than spend the money on a new exterior door. What are my solutions? Are there ways to get a few mullions replaced?
Ok, that was informative. Anyway, the door is
double glazed and it looks like the glass on the outside of the door is held in the same way as the glass on the inside, with metal members internally
in between and wood mullions/transoms on the surfaces of the glass.
A mullion is a structural element which divides adjacent window units. Mullions may be made of any material, but wood and aluminum are most common, although stone is also used between windows. Mullions are vertical elements and are often confused with transoms, which lie horizontally. The word is also confused with the “muntin” (or “glazing bar” in the UK) which is the precise word for the very small strips of wood or metal that divide a sash into smaller glass “panes” or “lights”.
A mullion acts as a structural member, and it carries the dead load of the weight above the opening and the wind load acting on the window unit back to the building structure. The term is also properly applied to very large and deep structural members in many curtain wall systems.
When a very large glazed area was desired before the middle of the nineteenth century, such as in the large windows seen in gothic churches or Elizabethan palaces, the openings necessarily required division into a framework of mullions and transoms, often of stone. It was further necessary for each glazed panel, sash or casement to be further subdivided by muntins or lead cames because large panes of glass were reserved primarily for use as mirrors, being far too costly to use for glazing windows or doors.
In traditional designs today, mullions and transoms are normally used in combination with divided-light windows and doors when glazing porches or other large areas.
The term ‘mullion’ is also used to refer to the spacing (from screen bezels etc) between adjacent display elements in a video wall system (in which an input video image is distributed across multiple displays to increase display size and resolution). In this usage, ‘mullion’ refers to both the horizontal and vertical spacing.
The term “mullion” has a related but slightly different meaning in cabinetry, where it refers to any vertical member on a cabinet face that separates adjacent elements, usually doors or drawers. This same element is also called a “mid-stile.”
How old is the door? Is the glass held in with glazing putty on the outside? or is there a wooden glazing stop?
BTW, The difference between muttons and mullions are that muttons visually separate glazed areas, where mullions structurally separate them. Newer doors use muttons over a single pane of glass and are not as strong but easier to replace.