AG Millworks makes the wall that opens. Folding, sliding and French swing door systems, built by hand in Ventura, California, in clad wood, solid wood or Accoya. Order the retractable screen with your door and it arrives fitted inside the jamb from the factory, so no separate track gets screwed to the face of your opening six months later.
Your door gets made in one building, one at a time. Three things happen there that you notice later at your own house.
AG fits a retractable accordion screen into the door jamb at the factory. Pull it across when you want it. Let it go and it retracts, or it pockets right inside the jamb where you cannot see it at all. It is an option, so it has to be specified and priced with your door. On a wide opening we would take it. The alternative is a screen track fixed to the face of a finished wall by somebody else, and on a run that wide the track is what your eye lands on.
Your system gets built up on the floor in Ventura, panels hung and hardware set, and somebody opens and closes the whole thing before it leaves. Then it comes apart again for the truck. The frame arrives at your house as one assembled piece, and on bi-folds the header is already drilled with the hardware in the box. None of that is glamorous. It is the difference between an install that goes in and one that turns into a conversation.
A tall bi-fold panel has to stay dead straight or it will not fold. AG builds its clad panels around an LVL core, a laminated timber beam, with thin wood veneer skins over it, and that core is what AG credits for holding the panel straight. So the face you put your hand on is timber, whatever anyone tells you about clad doors not being real wood. The all-wood build has an LVL core too, and solid Accoya has none.
One choice sets the look of an AG system more than any other, and it runs across folding, sliding and swing alike. The stile is the upright piece of frame at the edge of each panel, and how wide it is decides how much glass you keep. AG publishes three of them. It calls them ultra-modern, contemporary and classic, not good, better and best. Euro sits in the middle. Put the two ends side by side. You can see the difference from your driveway.
AG calls it ultra-modern
A run of panels reads as glass with dark lines between it. The lock stile stays wider, because a real multi-point lock has to fit somewhere. One thing to settle before you fall for it. The Slimline sell sheet is written for clad wood, and the only Slimline energy figures AG publishes are clad wood, while the main brochure still lists Slimline in its all-wood and Accoya columns. If you want Slimline in solid timber, ask us to get that confirmed by the factory first.
AG calls it classic
Deep stiles, a deep top rail, and a deeper bottom rail if you want one. That throws proper shadow lines across the face of your door. It suits Spanish and Mediterranean elevations, which is most of this valley. In clad wood it is also the one profile AG footnotes on its energy tables. The glass there takes a little more thought than the frame does.
All four come out of the same Ventura building. They differ in how your opening behaves on an ordinary Tuesday, and in where the panels end up once it is open. Below them are the corner and combination layouts, where two systems meet in one opening.
Doors and windows
Bi-fold · clad wood, all wood or Accoya
Multi-Slide and Lift & Slide
French swing · in-swing or out-swing
Bi-fold pass-through window
Corners and combinations
Zero corner · bi-fold meeting bi-fold
Pass-through window · folding door
Multi-Slide, Lift & Slide and bi-fold on one elevation
There is an AG bi-fold and a French door standing on the floor at 75-100 Saint Charles Place. Push them by hand before you decide anything.
Try them in Palm DesertClad wood is beautiful, and it will accent any home out here. Real timber on the room side, where you see it and put your hand on it, takes a stain and reads warm against stucco and tile. Outside, where the sun is, the face is factory-finished aluminum in Kynar paint.
Five steps, and you can stop at any of them.
These are AG's own published figures. The sizes are ceilings, not the size of an ordinary opening, and the energy numbers were measured on one glass package, so different glass moves them.
| What it is | AG's figure | What it means in the room |
|---|---|---|
| Longest folding run | 16 panels, out to 64 ft | One whole side of a great room, folded back against the walls |
| Largest folding panel | 4 ft by 13 ft | Full height glass in a tall room, and it still folds by hand |
| Longest sliding run | Offered out to 80 ft | A pool elevation that opens along its whole length |
| Largest sliding panel | 8 ft by 12 ft | Fewer frame lines standing between you and the view |
| Euro stiles and rails | 3-7/16 in | The middle profile, between Slimline and Traditional |
| U-factor, Pico bi-fold | 0.29, or 0.25 with the i89 coating | How much heat crosses the whole door. Lower is better, and this is the number Title 24 reads. |
| Solar heat gain, Pico bi-fold | 0.22, or 0.21 with the i89 coating | How much of the sun's warmth comes in with the light. Lower means a cooler room on the west side of the house. |
| Warranty, clad over wood | 10 years limited | AG's own term on the clad build, printed in its 2021 brochure |
| Warranty, solid Accoya | 5 years limited | Same brochure, same page |
| Warranty, all wood | 1 year limited | AG writes minimum overhang requirements into it, so your roof line matters |
Exact numbers vary by configuration. We confirm yours with AG before anything is ordered.
Clad, all wood or solid Accoya. What sits above your opening decides it, because your roof line is what keeps sun and rain off the face of a wood door. On a west elevation with no deep overhang we put you in clad. Deep covered patios open the other two up.
We warranty our installations for a year and stand behind our work. Typically manufacturers would offer a limited lifetime warranty or 10 year warranty on their products (you would need to refer to each manufacturer for their respective warranties). If something goes wrong later, our office files the claim and books the repair for you.
These come out of AG's own library of finished jobs, not ours. Look at what the doors do. Then come and put your hand on the hardware in Palm Desert. Click any photograph to see it larger.
Yes, if your panel count allows it. AG calls it the daily door. Give one direction an odd number of panels and a single leaf swings open on its own, like an ordinary door. You are not moving the whole wall to let the dog out or carry a tray through.
What matters is the count in each direction, not the total. A symmetrical six-panel wall split three and three qualifies. A four-panel split two and two does not, and neither does an eight-panel split four and four. AG stars those layouts in its configuration chart with a flat note: no daily door and no access from the exterior. Pico is the exception, because its shootbolt lock takes a key from outside on even panel counts. Walk your configuration through with us before the order goes in.
It can, and what decides it is how your unit is specified. Title 24 is California's energy code. The Coachella Valley sits in Climate Zone 15, which carries the strictest solar heat gain limits in the state. AG publishes its folding and sliding systems as Title 24 prescriptive compliant and NFRC certified, which means an independent body has tested and labeled the energy numbers. On swing doors and folding windows the wording is softer: compliant options are available.
Two clad wood builds carry a footnote of their own: the Traditional profile on folding systems, and out-swing Traditional French doors. Both need an added glass coating AG calls i89 to reach prescriptive compliance. Every figure AG publishes rests on one glass package, so change the glass and the numbers stop describing your door. We get the profile and the glass confirmed in writing by the factory for your configuration before the order goes in. Where a specification calls for a Title 24 consultant to model the whole envelope, we arrange and coordinate that consultant. The modeling itself is not done in our office.
Nineteen species on the clad and all-wood builds. You can have them prefinished in prime, paint or stain before they arrive. That keeps a painter off your patio. A few of the nineteen come paint or stain grade only. Accoya is a material of its own, outside that list.
On the outside of a clad door there are four standard colors plus clear anodized, in Kynar 700 paint. AG will match a custom color you bring them. Printed swatches shift on the press, so sign off from a real chip in your own light before it reaches the order. We keep the chips at the showroom.
No. The only window in the AG range is the bi-fold pass-through, the one that folds back over an outdoor bar counter. Single hungs, sliders, casements and picture windows come from other lines we carry, and our window replacement page sets those out side by side.
A front door is its own conversation and an easier one in person. Come and talk it through at the showroom.
Family owned in Palm Desert since 1986. License CSLB 906636, and you can look that number up yourself at cslb.ca.gov. Our own W-2 crews work every job from Palm Springs out to Indio, and we pull more window and door permits than any other company in the Coachella Valley. Showroom at 75-100 Saint Charles Place, Monday to Friday, 7:30 to 4:30. Call (760) 773-1053.
