One of the sets of french doors was stuck closed. It appeared that the three point lock was stuck at the top of the door keeping it from opening. I thought I was going to have to take the door pins out to remove the door and fix the lock. That did not turn out to be the case though.
Instead I searched for information and on a couple of building forums I found folks with similar problems. Although the lock itself could have been broken, and I took it apart to see if I could pull the shoot bolt down from inside the lock. Unlike the Pella locks, this one did not have a manual release for the shoot bolt. But it also appeared that the lock itself was not broken. The mechanism was turning and the shoot bolt was moving. Just not enough to open the door.
On closer inspection I noticed that the door jamb was sitting right on top of the door. Another installation problem I supposed. I also read that when drywall is connected to the jamb, cracking and pulling the jamb out of place can happen. It is considered a poor job. But the drywall was not connected to the jamb at all.
I ended up using long enough 2 x 2 and 1 x 2’s to lever up under the door jamb to release the retracted bolt end. Once the door was opened, I had some thoughts about how to keep the frame from descending onto the door.
I consulted some older photos of the construction and could see the gap between the frame and the header.
Door jamb header gap
I wanted to avoid extra nails or screws in the jamb so I just decided to take out the short screws in the metal guide for the shoot bolts and used longer screws to pull the jamb up into the header more tightly.
I also did the middle door but the end door did not have the same problem so I left it alone for now. Again the installation seems to be problematic. But luckily I have the time and inclination to figure out a fix for these issues so far.