Hey everyone, this is Brandon Freeman. I’m at this new custom home that we’re building in Ramona, California. In an earlier video, we showed you what we’re doing with the recessed sills for the sliding glass doors in this home. We’re a little further down the road, and now I want to show you what it took to get to this point and how it’s done.
Sliding Glass Doors Used
In this home, we are installing two sliding glass doors made by IWC. These are IWC sliding Ambassador series doors. We have an XO sliding glass door in the main bedroom.
The great room has an OXXO sliding door with two fixed panels on the outside and two center panels in the middle (moved outward). This is a 16-foot wide opening. When this is open, it will be eight feet wide and be a huge opening.
Installing IWC Sliding Glass Door
There are a lot of different steps to get to this point to recess a sill. First, I want to walk you through that and show you what’s involved.
1. Set Form Board and 2x8 on the Floor
At the beginning stages of all this, when we’re pouring concrete, we use a form board and then have a 2×8 laid flat, which is an inch and a half thick. It creates this step that you can see, but that’s rough. We have yet to determine the finished floor height or the thickness of our sill, but we can figure that out once all those things start coming into play.
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2. Determine Sill Elevation
We tell our clients at this point, “Hey, we need you to pick out your flooring material for inside the home.” In this case, this house is getting luxury vinyl plank flooring.
The reason for that is we have to find out the elevation of this sill because it all builds up. So to do that, we cut off small pieces of this flooring, glue them down, and level them.
By leveling, we glue little pieces every four feet to ensure the sill is completely leveled from one side of the door to the other.
3. Level the Floor Height
After that, we measure our sill, which is an inch and three-eights high. From there, we create a buildup with a shim and some glue. We do it every four feet. It’s a nice and manageable distance, so we’re not working with a large level. So we’re going to do it in six different spots.
You want your finished floor height to flush out with the top of your sill at the end. That way, there are not any toe stabbers or anything like that.
4. Fill the Gap
Once that height is established, we use a rapid-set mortar, grout, or concrete mix to fill the gap. We pour a small pad, probably about eight- or 10-inch diameter, in each place where those shims are built up. When we pour the rest to screed off, it gives us a larger working area. So instead of screeding off to this tiny spot here, we can work with a much larger size.
5. Screed Concrete
All right, we’ll move forward and start pouring concrete in between the pads completely. Then we use our leveler or straight edge and screed that off so the concrete is perfectly leveled and at the right height.
6. Waterproof the Sill
The next point is waterproofing. This sill must be waterproof because it’s for a sliding glass door for patio. There will be water and rain out here at some point, so we want to ensure no water can come in from the outside.
Some sliding glass doors have an aluminum silk pan, but this one does not. So for this application, we used a liquid flashing made by Zip, a very durable type of silicone.
The flashing takes about two or three days to set. After that, we can go ahead and move forward with the installation.
Final Thoughts
Those are the ins and outs of our recessed sill pan with the IWC door. There are many details to make it happen, but this is an aesthetic and functional way.
If you need help building a custom home, ADU, or whole-house remodeling, request a project consultation with us. We have offices in Ramona, California, serving the San Diego County area, and Middleton, Idaho, serving the Boise Metro area. You can also explore our comprehensive collection of similar videos on our YouTube channel, The Real Property Show.
