Wide Door Openings and Structural Framing in Camas, WA
Up on Prune Hill and the lots above Lacamas Lake, people buy the view and then want the living room to actually feel it. A wide slider or a folding glass door does that, but a twelve-foot gap in an outside wall is not a window order. It is a piece of structure you are taking out and rebuilding. The header, the posts that carry it, the footing underneath and the flashing that shrugs off a Gorge storm all have to be right. We size and build that part, and the pretty door is the easy half.
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On anything sent before 5pm
We match or beat most written estimates
Remodels completed
What these jobs include around Camas
Sliders and folding glass doors to 12ft, wall opening included
We saw through the wall, frame a stout header across the new opening, and set the unit plumb and shimmed. Wind off the Gorge drives rain sideways, so a sloped pan goes under the sill and head flashing laps over it. Siding and trim boards return outside, while patched drywall, fresh casing and paint finish it.
Beams, posts and load paths
Pulling bearing walls, dropping in sized beams and headers, and carrying the load down through posts and footings to solid ground.
Moving, widening or adding openings
Making an opening bigger, shifting it along the wall, or cutting a brand-new one.
Fixing framing that failed
Jacking up headers that have sagged, rebuilding spans someone built too light, and undoing the shortcuts a previous crew left in the walls.
Closing it back up, both sides
Siding, casing, drywall, flooring and paint, so the same crew that opened the wall is the one that leaves it looking finished.
The wall that became one room
The wall came out, the beam went in, and two rooms became one. Same footprint on both sides of the line.
Drag the handle. Left, the wall between the kitchen and the next room opened up: studs exposed, the ladder standing in the opening, the floor covered. Right, the same footprint finished: a long island under pendants, and the two rooms reading as one.
Before After The structure hiding behind the glass
That twelve-foot gap was solid wall, and solid wall is what kept the roof and everything above it off the floor. Take it out and the whole load has to find a new path down: across a beam sized for the span, into a post at each end, and through a footing that reaches real bearing soil. Undersize any one of those and the door becomes the gauge that shows it, with panels starting to drag, the frame pulling out of square, and hairline cracks creeping from the drywall corners. On an exposed wall catching Gorge wind off the river, that margin matters more still. The glass is the simple part. Building the structure around it is the job, and it is ours, permit and engineering included.
The door, the view, and what holds it up
This is the part where we help you decide. You spend the most on the unit, but you live with the opening long after the price is forgotten.
Start with the motion you want from the wall. A multi-slide runs its panels sideways along the wall, or hides them in a wall pocket if you build one, and it seals up tight, but one panel stays put unless you pay for that pocket. A folding, or bifold, door hinges the whole run and stacks it to one side, so the opening really is wide open, which asks more of the header, the track and the rollers and costs accordingly. A big lift-and-slide or a wide French set sits in between. What usually makes the call is not the door at all but the room: you need bare wall for panels to slide against or floor to pocket them into, and in plenty of Camas floor plans the fireplace, a hallway or a corner takes that space.
Then what the frame is made of. Vinyl is the budget pick and the chunkiest to look at, and on a run this wide the frame is a surprising amount of what you see every day. Aluminum-clad wood gives you warm wood on the inside and a face outside that laughs off the weather, and it is where most of these jobs land. Thermally broken aluminum gets you the thinnest lines and the biggest sheets of glass, and it sits at the top of the sheet. Fiberglass splits the difference on price and barely moves as the seasons swing from a cold Gorge morning to a hot afternoon, which counts far more across twelve feet than it ever would on a single sash.
Give the glass and the threshold the same weight as the frame. Low-E and argon are just the baseline now, and they earn their keep on a west wall taking the long summer glare off Lacamas Lake or the river. Down at the floor you choose between a flush sill, which looks clean and lets the room spill straight onto the deck, and a raised one, which looks heavier and sheds water better. Flush is the harder detail to keep dry, so it only works over a proper sill pan with a drainage plane behind it. Sheltered under a patio cover, flush is an easy yes. Standing out in open weather on a windward wall, we will steer you to the raised sill and explain the trade.
On the structure there is nothing to pick, only arithmetic. How wide the hole is and how much roof, floor and wall stack on top of it decide whether a header is sawn lumber, an engineered beam or a steel section, and how stout a post each end has to be. Those posts cannot just land on the subfloor and hope; they need a beam, a dropped post through the crawlspace, or a poured footing to carry the weight to ground. When a bid for a wide door comes in cheaper than the rest, this is the line that quietly went missing.
Last comes the finish. Siding and exterior trim outside, drywall, casing, flooring and paint inside, all wrapping the new opening so it reads as part of the house. Matching an existing floor or feathering new siding into weathered old boards is its own small craft, especially on an older downtown home with original trim. One crew carrying all of it is the difference between a door that looks like it was always there and one that looks stuck on afterward.
The step that gets buried
What you are looking at is a real install frozen at the point the rest of the job depends on. The existing siding is gray lap, cut back clean to the new opening, and a big slider is already standing in the hole. Someone up a ladder is driving a fastener through the white nailing fin that rings the unit.
That black strip running down the side jamb is flashing membrane, and the sequence it goes on in is not negotiable. The sill pan goes first, lapped out over the wall face below so water rides over the top of it. Jamb membrane next, over the ends of the sill. Head flashing after that, over the jambs. Then the weather barrier folded down over the head. Every lap points down and out, the exact logic a roof uses with its shingles. Flip one and the framing behind the trim soaks up water season after season with nothing showing on the surface.
That is the reason we would rather show a bare opening than a buttoned-up finished one. The minute trim and siding close over this, you cannot see any of it and you are trusting whoever did it. Wood rot is the repair we are known for, so we have pried open more than a few walls where exactly this got rushed in our long wet winters. We would sooner you watched it go together than take it on faith later.
Back to keeping water out
A door the width of a wall is, from the weather’s point of view, a flashing seam the width of a wall, and Camas throws the better part of four feet of rain at it most years, plenty of it coming in sideways on the east wind out of the Gorge. The sill pan, the head flashing and a weather barrier lapped in the right order are the only things standing between that good-looking opening and the rot work we are better known for. We detail every opening as if we expect to be the crew tearing it back open someday, which is precisely the habit that means no one ever has to.
When the wall is an interior one
Inside the house the engineering is no different. The wall between a cramped kitchen and the living room is the one we are asked about most, whether it is a 1900s place near Crown Park with lath and plaster over the studs or a newer Camas Meadows build with an island on the wish list. The first question is always the same: is that wall holding weight? We open enough of it to know for certain, give you a straight answer, and if it is bearing we quote the beam, the posts and the Camas permit as a single real number rather than a low one that creeps up once the drywall is off.
What a wide door job runs in Camas
One line on this estimate dwarfs the others, and that is the door itself. Brand, glass package and frame material pull it across a wide range, so that is where your choices show up on the bill. Everything we build around it tracks three things: how wide the opening is, whether that wall is carrying load, and what it takes to close the siding outside and the finish inside. We list the unit, the structure and the finish as separate lines so nothing hides inside a lump sum. Holding a written quote already? Send it over, because we match or beat most of them by 10%.
The way the dollars stack up here is lopsided in a way most remodels are not, because that one door towers over the rest. Two honest bids on the same opening can sit thousands of dollars apart before anybody makes a cut, purely on frame and glass. Under the door comes the structure, the beam and posts and whatever has to happen beneath the floor to run their load to ground. Then the labor to cut a clean opening and set a heavy unit dead square and weathertight. Then the finish, inside and out. Then the engineering and the City of Camas permit, which are modest numbers but not ones you get to skip.
Two questions move the bottom line more than anything you point at in a showroom. One, is the wall load-bearing, which on an exterior Camas wall it almost always is. Two, do the posts at each end have somewhere solid to land, because a post hanging over empty crawlspace means we are down there adding a beam or pouring a footing. That second line is the one the suspiciously cheap bid tends to leave off, and it is the one that turns a bargain into a surprise.
10%
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Snap a picture of the wall, both faces if you can get them, and send it along. If it lands with us before 5pm, you hear back the same day.
How a job runs, start to finish
For all the worry a wall-sized opening causes, the wall itself stands open for only a day or two of the whole run, and that stretch is scheduled to the hour. Here is the order it goes in.
Measure and engineer the span
We come out, take the measurements, and trace where the weight overhead comes down and what is waiting under the floor at each end to catch it. If the span is wide enough to call for it, a structural engineer sizes the beam and the posts and stamps the sheet. That stamped sheet is what the City of Camas writes the permit against.
Permit filed, door ordered
The application goes to the Camas Building Division over on NE 4th Avenue, and the door gets ordered the same week. This is the patient part, and it costs you nothing in disruption because not a single board has been touched yet. A door this size is built to order, and its lead time, not ours, usually sets when we break ground.
Cover the room, carry the load
Day one on site, the floors and whatever stays in the room get covered, and we build temporary stud walls to shoulder the roof load before anything structural comes out. No blade touches the real wall until the door is sitting in the driveway and that temporary support is doing its job.
Open the wall, drop the beam
Now the wall comes down, the beam and its posts go up, and the opening is dried in before the crew leaves that evening. This is the lone day the house is actually open to the sky, so we pick it off the Camas forecast and dodge the days the Gorge wind is up.
Set it plumb, then weatherproof
The door is leveled square and plumb, shimmed, and fastened off, then flashed in the one order that works: sill pan, then jambs, then head, with the weather barrier folded over the top. The building inspector sees all of it before a scrap of trim or siding goes on to hide it.
Trim it out, in and out
Siding and exterior trim go on first to close the weather out, then drywall, casing, flooring and paint on the inside. We finish by walking the room with you and, once the framing and finish have taken a set, giving the door one last tune so it glides and latches the way it should.
What Camas homeowners ask us
Should I go with a slider or a folding door?
A slider is the simpler machine, seals up tight, and keeps one panel fixed in place for good. A folding door clears the whole opening so nothing stands in the view, but it costs more and leans harder on the header, the track and the hardware that carry it. We lay both out against your actual opening and your budget and tell you straight, since the framing work runs about the same either way and we have no reason to push one; the extra cost sits in the bifold unit itself.
Is a permit required to open a wall this wide?
It is. Cutting a large new opening or taking out a wall that carries load is structural work, and in Camas that means a permit and inspections through the City of Camas Building Division on NE 4th Avenue, not through Clark County, with stamped engineering for the wider spans. We are a registered Washington contractor, WA Lic. #EVERGRS757MC, and we pull the permit and line up the engineer so you are not chasing either one.
How long does my house sit open to the rain?
Not long at all. We do not cut the wall until the header material and the door itself are both on site, and the opening is dried in and weathertight by the end of the same day it comes open. The finish work happens afterward, with the house already sealed back up against the weather.
Can you fix a wide door another crew botched?
Yes, and it is more common than you would think: a perfectly good door sitting in a badly built opening. Usually the header was undersized or the flashing got skipped. We open the surround back up, put the structure right, flash it over properly, and rehang the unit so it runs true.
Just how wide can you take an opening?
That is a structural answer, not a door one. Up to twelve feet is standard for us, wider is possible with engineering assessed per job, and the thing that changes as the opening grows is the beam overhead, from sawn lumber to an engineered beam to a steel section, with heavier posts and a stronger load path at both ends. We will not open any width until it has been calculated first, and we never hand that math to the door supplier.
Won't a door that big end up leaking?
Not when the opening is detailed properly, and that is really a flashing job rather than a door one. The weatherproofing has to layer from the bottom up so every piece drains over the one below it: pan at the sill, membrane up the jambs, flashing across the head, then the housewrap lapped over all of it. The leaking wide doors we get called to are nearly always good units sitting in openings where that layering was done out of order.
Do we have to move out during the work?
No. We stand temporary support before a single cut is made, the wall is open for a day and not a week, and it is dried in before we pack up that night. Clear the room out and plan on one loud day while the sawing and beam setting happen. Beyond that, you can stay put the whole time.
Will the inside floor sit level with the deck?
Most of the time, yes, and a continuous floor from room to deck is a great look. It hinges on a low or flush threshold, which is the tougher spot to keep rain from sneaking under, so it has to sit over a sound sill pan with room for any water to escape. Beneath a patio cover we say go for it. On a fully open wall facing the weather, we will be honest about the tradeoff before you commit.
The area we cover for this work
Our shop sits on SE 184th Ave in east Vancouver, a quick run west of Camas and no bridge to cross to get to you. We take framing and wide-door work right across town, on the view lots up Prune Hill and above Lacamas Lake, through the older streets around downtown and Crown Park, out to Fern Prairie and Grass Valley, and into the newer Camas Meadows subdivisions, with Washougal and the rest of east Clark County in the same reach.
The rest of what we do
What homeowners say
Three of the 50 reviews on our Google profile, in the homeowners' own words.
David's work was terrific. Repaired a rotted out structural framing issue in a bathroom and replaced (and resized!) a window in the same space. He initially quoted a two day job but was able to finish in a single day. Dedicated! Will be using him again.
Joe H.Bathroom framing repair
Evergreen crew installed three skylights for us. Once we opened the ceiling there was more to do than expected and they handled it without drama. Clean work, fair price, and they cleaned up after themselves.
Foad M.Three skylights
Wow. Just Wow. Had the Evergreen crew replace existing fencing, put in a 33.5ft x 18.5ft multi-tiered deck, and assemble a 12ft x 16ft gazebo. Couldn't be happier with the results.
Anthony L.Deck, fence and gazebo
Tell us what needs fixing
Send photos and a short description. If it arrives before 5pm you get an answer the same day.
Already have a written estimate from someone else? Send that too. We match or beat most estimates by 10%.
- Call(971) 715-0673
- Emaildavid@evergreenremodeling.co
- Office505 SE 184th Ave Unit 320, Vancouver, WA 98683
- LicenseWA Lic. #EVERGRS757MC
