Lynn Ward - The Door Guy

Door Consultants, Inc. was founded by Lynn Ward (aka Door Guy), professional carpenter, and entrepreneur. Lynn has made installing new doors a specialty since 1980, where he began in Milwaukee.

Door Consultants has been serving greater Chicago for 30 years. We provide you with the security you need in a hurry with same day service on repairs.

Our office is located in the loop, so if needed, we can be almost any place in the city within an hour.  We respond to emergency calls at any time, day or night and weekends.

We specialize in emergency door repair from break-ins and other situations as well as custom installations of new doors.  All the work we do is completed at our customer’s location.

Our History

Hi, my name is Lynn Ward (aka Door Guy) and I am the CEO and founder of Door Consultants.  I have been repairing and installing doors since 1980.

The first trend in the door work was the installation of new wood doors into existing wood frames. This required that a few special tools be acquired and some custom tools be made.  With the proper tools, 2 new doors were installed in often different homes every day, 6 days a week.

These flush wood doors were all Architectural grade lumber core, either Oak or Birch.  These doors were readily available then, but now must be custom made.

The work in the early days included wood storm-doors, round top wood doors, and frame repairs.

It was after making a frame repair nearly every day for 2 weeks that a better and quicker repair was needed and the first Stainless Steel angle was installed on a broken wood frame. After several different designs and the proper cutting tools were found, the S. S. angle was standardized and now over 1,600 have been installed.

These frame repairs were usually done after a break-in, but once they proved to be much stronger than any type of repair made with wood, I began installing them as a preventive measure to wood frames without any damage.

The early days also included some glass and aluminum doors and many Hollow Metal doors and frames.

In the 80's pre-hung steel doors with wood frames were just beginning to be marketed, but in the older homes in Milwaukee, they would not fit into the buildings and they did not look good on the building as well, thus it was new doors into the existing frame for many years.

After arriving in Chicago in 1990, the focus of my work was with churches for several years. This encompassed repairing and installing new doors and frames while reusing all of the old wood trim.

Starting in 2007 many older apartment buildings were converted to Co-ops and condominiums.  These buildings had to comply with a new fire safety code that required among several things, that fire-rated doors and frames be installed at almost every opening.

The work Door Consultants was doing was not the cookie cutter installations, but where each door and frame had to be replaced while keeping the existing interior finishes such as granite and tile intact.

This work is now mostly complete and we have now begun replacing and repairing doors in newer homes that were not installed properly, thus lots of reinstallations of the existing doors.