French Door Track Kit

We love our french doors, but for some reason there are a lot of these doors around that have no screen doors on them. The main problem is that these doors have no tracks for a screen door to ride on.

The french door track kit fixes this problem. Its a set of three tracks which gives your french door a place for the screen door to slide. 

Whats in the french door track kit ?

The first track is a white aluminum top rail with a track down the center for the top rollers on a screen door. The top rail gets screwed to the the header. Thats the wood or vinyl beam at the top of your french door.

The second track is an aluminum track with a rail for the bottom rollers of a screen door. It is screwed to the bottom sill. The color is mill finish aluminum to match the sill on your french door.

The last track is a PVC or vinyl track that gets screwed to the door jamb or the vertical post your door closes against. It wraps around the edge of the screen door to seal it against the jamb. It also provides a place to mount the hasp for the screen door lock.

All three tracks are 84 inches or 7 feet long to fit the majority of french doors. 

The tracks are easy to install if you are bit of a handyperson. Just cut to length and screw into place. The most difficult part is making sure the tracks go on straight and that the bottom track lines up exactly with the top track. 

The tools required for the job are a hacksaw, a screwdriver, a measuring tape and a plumb bob to keep everything straight and true.

Once the tracks are installed you can have a screen door installed by a local glass shop or do it yourself using one the knockdown screen doors kits from fixingscreens.com.

Heres some pictures of me installing a new screen door track. Many times french doors come with at least the screen bottom track. This door had one but the track was totally worn out. My tracks are 72 inches long so first I measured the length and then marked the track for cutting.

I like to rivet the tracks to the threshold because the screen door track is only 1/4 inch tall and in the past I have had problems with the heads of the screws interfering with the rollers on the screen door. Rivets sit flush and the rollers cant bang into them. Makes sure the screen door will run super smoothly.

This is the finished bottom track. On this french door you can see the post in between the two doors which is called an "astragal". This astragal was too far away from the screen door. Normally a screen door has a vinyl bugflap or fur pile weatherstrip that seals up against the astragal. In this case I am going to have an extension made out of white finish sheet metal to make the astragal stick out far enough to meet the screen door.