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Front Door Options for Tiny Houses

Front Door Options for Tiny Houses

How can you get a snazzy front door for your tiny house?? The majority of tiny house plans call for custom doorways. This is due to proportionality: tiny house = tiny door. The major hurdle is that custom doors are difficult to build and expensive to order.

Is there any way around this? Of course, there is! Try one of these two options:

1). DESIGN YOUR HOUSE TO HAVE A STANDARD DOOR

If you are in the early stages of considering a tiny house, you can modify your design to have a standard door or even large french doors!  Check out Vina’s tiny house:

Vina's Tiny House
Vina’s Tiny House doorway. Photo Credit: www.solhausdesign.com

Pros: Easy traffic flow. Available at your local hardware store, garage sales, salvage yards, and sometimes even for free on the side of the road. Can add an open air aesthetic to your home.

Cons: Your door will not be in proportion to your house.You’ll need to design the layout of your home around the doorway. It will also take up valuable real estate inside your home and/or on your porch. Note: Vina built a large detached porch and her doors swing out. Most residential doors swing in, but you can always bend the rules!

2). TRIM DOWN A STANDARD DOOR

If having a proportional door is important to you, but you lack the proper carpentry skills and finances, this might be the way to go. 

Mini Motives Tiny House
Macy’s Tiny House w/ a Proportional Entry Door. Photo credit: www.minimotives.com

Pros: Proportional door that can swing in or out without taking up much space inside your home/on your porch.

Cons: You will have a tiny doorway, which means you can NOT move large furniture items in and out. So think ahead! Finding a door that can be trimmed isn’t always easy. If you want glass in your door, count on it being even more complicated. You will probably choose a door without any patterns. And finally, the process to trim can be difficult.

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No matter what you do, make sure your front door is: 

1). Solid wood

2). 1 & 3/4″ thickness (exterior standard thickness)

3). Any glass is tempered

I’ve heard of some tiny housers using interior doors for their entry door. This is definitely an appealing option as interior doors can come in a variety of smaller sizes. But, if you’re planning on traveling with your home, I wouldn’t recommend it. Most interior doors are hallow and flimsy. This would not suffice in bad weather conditions or for security purposes. here-s-johnny-oBuild Tip: If you plan on traveling with your tiny home, we suggest getting a deadbolt with a key lock on BOTH sides. This will make it more difficult for someone to break in. 

————————— But what door did we choose???—————————

Guillaume and I wanted a door with glass, like Brittany‘s door below, in order to maximize the amount of natural light in our home. We also wanted a proportional door (a tiny door), that would swing in and fit the door opening in the Tumbleweed Cypress plans.

brittany's fencl
Brittany’s Fencl w/ a glass front door

The majority of narrow glass doors we found were not suitable for life on the road. After many hours of searching, we finally sought out the help of a local door salesman. So who is this mysterious door guru, you ask? We made friends with Benny from www.buymydoors.com.

After describing our tiny home and our dream entry door, Benny bent over backwards to help us. He searched his substantial door warehouse and his incoming shipments for weeks – sending us photos and dimensions until we found our door!

Tiny House Door
Our future door!

Our future front door: Solid Mahogany with 8-lite windows, and originally 24″ x 80″ (a standard size)

Next we needed to trim down our door to fit our our rough opening size: 24 1/4″ x 77 3/4″ (before door jamb). Carpenter Don trimmed, sanded, and applied a beautiful pecan finish to make our door really shine!

Our Final Front Door

So the moral of the story is, you have a few different front door options. Keep searching!

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BuyMyDoors.com

  • Thank you to our sponsor: Buymydoors.com – the premiere online door store and much more
  • Thank You Deb Dutilh, for helping us find our front door!

 

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22 Comments

  1. April 25, 2020 / 2:13 pm

    Hi I have a quick question just out of curiosity how does this bypass the irc building codes. As far as I know your front door MUST be 80 inches tall and 32 inches wide(although commercially it seems even 30 in wide ones are being sold). I mean no harm I’m just curious because no matter where I look there just isn’t enough information about the building codes specifically for tiny houses. Thank you for reading and have a lovely day.

  2. June 20, 2017 / 11:26 am

    Working on my wood door now, I am also building a cypress 20. What did your carpenter use to seal the door? How has this held up in wet climates? Have you had any issues with the wood swelling and shrinking as you travel to different climates? Thanks for sharing!

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