LESLIE: Michelle in South Carolina, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
MICHELLE: I was curious. We just bought a house; it’s a fixer-upper and it has six exterior, sliding-glass doors on the interior of the house.
TOM: That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?
MICHELLE: Yeah, I think that the people who did the house had – they were an ugly couple and they did a few additions.
TOM: OK.
MICHELLE: And when did they did the – they didn’t really renovate; they just added.
LESLIE: Added on and kept everything as it was and sliding door and all.
TOM: OK. Right.
MICHELLE: Yep. But I appreciate it because I’m a creative person, so I loved the collection of spaces and what it could be.
TOM: OK.
MICHELLE: My question is: can I take the sliding-glass doors from the interior and put them in an exterior wall?
TOM: If they are, in fact, exterior-grade doors, I don’t see why you couldn’t. But if they’re an older sliding door, you – the work in doing this is so much so that the expense of buying a new sliding-glass door would – may be insignificant compared to it. So I wouldn’t want you to …
LESLIE: Mm-hmm. Plus the energy efficiency.
TOM: I wouldn’t – that’s right. I wouldn’t want you to go through all the work of pulling out an old door, having to reframe it open to fit this old door and then put in an old, inefficient door. I’d rather – if you’re going to do all that structural work – that you put in a new, modern, energy-efficient door that’s going to really save you some money.
MICHELLE: OK. Is there anything to do with old sliding-glass doors?
TOM: No.
LESLIE: I mean are you taking them out?
MICHELLE: I eventually will have to take them out, just because they’re just cumbersome and don’t make good use of the space.
LESLIE: What you could do is contact your local Habitat for Humanity. Because if they’re in good condition and truly functioning and are exterior doors, they could use them on products and they also have sort of a warehouse that they’ll use to keep this stuff and sell off items that they’re not using anymore. So it might just be a good place that you know it’ll actually get used and not end up in a landfill.
MICHELLE: Oh, that’d be great. Will they come get them?
LESLIE: You know, I’m not sure. I know it varies from state to state but if you check out their website, they’ll help you out with all of that.
MICHELLE: Great. OK, thanks.
TOM: You’re very welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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