Opening Doors - Part 1

Why pass up the opportunity to recycle a metaphor?  In this case, though, opening door refers to the noun.  That is, a door that opens instead of gets stuck.  The picture on the left should give some insight as to what it takes to get an old door to fit into a new space, and that's what I've been up to.

In most renovation projects, adding a door means a trip to the building supply center to pick out a pre-hung door that's trucked home and carefully installed into a rough opening.  For Chez Melendy, though, I'm intent on preserving as much of the original house as I can, and even though I knocked down all the walls on the second floor in order to change the layout, I want to put the original doors back in place wherever possible.  This means having to build 6 new custom door jambs.

So for me, the trip to the building supplier was to pick up some 6" wide finish stock, and since I'm planning on painting the upstairs trim, I bought pre-primed stock to save a step later, with minimal price difference to the unprimed stuff. 

Once home, I had to rip the boards down to the thickness of the new walls plus 1/8" to accomodate 1/16" of skim-coat plaster on each wall surface.  For any given door, I then have to cut the side pieces to fit the rough opening, and then cut a 3/16" rabbit into the side pieces about a 1/4" from the top--just enough to give that joint some strength for "door slammin' time."

The top piece of the jamb is cut to allow about 1/16" inch on either side of the door, and then it's screwed into place.  A couple of scraps are then screwed onto the jamb to hold it in place for sizing-up where the hinges will be placed.

The door then gets layed on a couple of saw horses so that the jamb can be placed around it, and a couple of roofing nails are put in place as spacers.  (Wood screw were what I had within reach, but they're more likely to leave marks in the new jamb.)

Once the door is snug in the jamb along with the spacers at the top, I mark where the hinges need to fall on the jamb.  I make marks for the top and bottom hinges, and then lift the jamb away from the door and clamp it up on its side in order to chisel away the spaces where the hinges will set.

To mark the borders of where I'm going to chisel, I lay one half of the hinge down on the jamb between the marks I've already made for its placement, and draw around the hinge using a utility knife.  Then I remove the hinge and, still using the utility knife, carve out the boarders of where I'm going to chisel.  This helps prevent over-shooting the mark later when I'm chiseling.

Once I have the hinges so they're flush with the jamb, I mark where to drill some pilot holes for the screws, and mount the hinges on both the door and the jamb, paying attention to keeping the hinges square.

Now I'm ready for a test fitting.  I place the jamb back over the door and insert the pins into the hinges.  With the door fitting well in the jamb, I'm ready to install it to the rough opening.

In Part 2 of Opening Doors we'll install the door and see how things change between "door on a bench" to "door in a wall," and learn a little lesson about tolerances.

--Thanks to artist and cabinet maker Matt Brown for showing me the way in making these door jambs.

Handyman