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Finish Carpentry 101

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Doors

I want to cover this category in depth, because many homeowners are wary of installing doors simply because they are not familiar with the process. Installing doors is easy, as is a lot of the stuff I cover on this site after you learn the basic steps. The problem with doors is that they have to be functional or they will drive you nuts, whereas a piece of crown can go up with a tube of caulk stuffed in it and no ones the wiser. Doors must be installed properly to function without sticking, creaking, moving around, etc.

I've put in a ton of doors in my career and over the years I've learned ways to do it fast and functional. A partner of mine and I once installed 150 doors in an apartment complex in just over a day and a half. They were done correctly as well. That's a lot of doors in a day and a half. The point here is that when you learn the the correct steps to installing doors they can be done fast and functional and are really easy to do. On the other hand nothing in carpentry work drives me more nuts than a door that is put in wrong. Trust me I've seen countless doors installed wrong by jacklegs that claimed to be good carpenters either through laziness or just not really know how to do it even though they said they did. It drives me nuts. I've run a lot of trim crews, and I was constantly having to manage the installation of the doors because as soon as I turned around, they would be slapped in wrong and the builder would chew me out because they were installed wrong. It's one of the most basic finish carpentry jobs that must be done when trimming out a house. When a builder walks on his job and inspects the trim crews work, one of the first things he checks is whether the doors are done properly, because he knows that if they aren't that a few weeks down the road they will be sticking or will be out of level so bad that they make the walls look terrible, etc. They simply must be done correctly. Once you learn how, it is like riding a bicycle; you will always remember it.

Let's start with the basic anatomy of a door. Simply put, a door is a box or frame that a slab (actual door) is hinged upon and swings right or left. The swing of a door is critical when installing it. I'll expand on that later in this chapter. The box in which the slab swings is called the door jambs, so you will have two side jambs and a top section of jamb.
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There are two main types of residential doors the homeowner needs to be familiar with: a sold jamb door and a split jamb door. A split jamb door is probably what most DIY'ers will end up with, because they are what Home Depot and Lowes carry for the most part. They are cheaper in price and quality, but they do have some advantages for the novice installer. They are called split jambs because the jamb is actually in two pieces. You install one side which typically already has your casing or trim already nailed on. Then you shim it between jamb and framing, and simply plug the other side of jamb on, which obviously is the other side of the two rooms. It will have the casing on it as well and then you nail it all off and you are done. Keep in mind this is just an overview of the door types themselves. I will go over the details of installation below.

Prehung doors come in a variety of sizes. This seems like a simple statement but when you want to buy them and they ask you what size you want, things go fuzzy quick. Most homes have a few basic sizes of doors, and they are labeled in size in a confusing way. For example, if you go to buy a door, most likely you will by buying what is called a 2-0 door, a 2-4 door, a 2-6 door, a 2-8 door or a 3-0 door, etc. I'm getting' a headache describing this. These terms simply mean that a 2-0 door is a 24-inch door, a 2-4 door would be 24 inches plus 4 inches. I know, I know, why not call it a 28-inch door? Maddening, isn't it? Along this line of logic, a 2-6 door would be 30 inches. Uhh, you get the idea. I don't know why this is, but I wasn't invited to the meeting where these things were hammered out. Most framers will frame a door opening 2 to 2.5 inches bigger than the door being installed, so, for example, if your door hole (pardon my French) is 32 inches wide you would need a 2-6 door or you can just pay somebody to go get it and have a martini.

This extra room the framers give you is so you can level the door and shim it. There are not many things more infuriating that trying to put a door in a hole that is framed too tight. If the hole is too tight, don't try to just cram the door in the hole with no room. It might work for a while, but it will not stand the test of time. If your house settles at all, and they all do, the door will stick eventually. It's better to have an opening that is too big than too small. That reminds me of a joke... uh, never mind. The height of the door will be listed as a 6-8 door or an 8-foot door. 6-8 meaning 6 feet, 8 inches high. I know, it's brilliant, isn't it? So if you have a 32-inch opening and went to Home Depot, you would simply tell them you need a 2-6/6-8 prehung split-jamb door. Then watch the guy from the plumbing section get on the radio and call for help. Eventually after two exhilarating hours, you will be the proud owner of a shiny new 30-inch by 80-inch door. Let the fun begin!

If the opening is too small, you can remove one stud on whichever side it would be better suited to do so, more on that later. Just remove the stud and insert a one by four, which is the same as a two by four in width but half the thickness. In other words, it's a two by four split in half. By the way, everything I am talking about will be illustrated on this site in picture form and eventually a companion DVD. I know, I know, I can't wait either. Anyhow, this one by four will still give the header in your opening some support. The header is the top of your opening. Please be advised that removing that stud may not be easy, because some framers will know that the hole is too small and stick four thousand nails in that stud just for kicks. I'm kidding, but doing this for a living, I have come upon houses in which every door opening in the house was framed impossibly tight. That's when you really have to get a sens of humor about this type of work and laugh it off. Crying should be done in the truck later away from prying eyes.

As I said earlier, the swing of the door is very important as well. Doors are either made to be a rights hadn or left hand door. Sounds simple enough, but you would be surprised how many times this goes wrong on new construction, let alone remodeling. If you place your butt, uhh, bear with me here, against the hinge side of any door, you can immediately tell whether it's a righty or a lefty. If upon resting your cheeks against the HINGE side of the door and it swings left, guess what: it's a lefty. You get the idea. I know this sounds simplistic, but you would be surprised how many people have trouble with this. The swing of the door is very important because it determines the flow of traffic through a room. Also, you never want to have a door cover up a light switch in a room if you can avoid it. It basically boils down to common sense and functionality. Typically you would want a bedroom door to open towards the wall away from the light switch and towards a wall. I know it's hard to understand this just by reading it, and believe me it's hard for me to explain it, but if you go in any of your bedrooms, and just take a look at the doors  you have, you will begin to see what I'm talking about. They don't cover up switches and most of the time swing toward a wall, so when they are open, the flow of traffic is unimpeded by having to make an awkward journey around the door when it's open. The next time you are bored out of your skull, walk around, look at your doors and you will begin to see the reason doors swing the way they do. Sometimes it's unavoidable to hang a door in a spot withou it being logical, but you always have to evaluate the functionality of how the door swings and any light switches you might be covering up when the door is opened all the way..

2/6 and 2/8 doors are usually going to be the size for bedrooms, because they are larger and will facilitate getting furniture in a room. 2/0 and 2/4 doors are common for closets and bathrooms.3/0 doors and larger are typically going to be leading outside. These are very general guidelines, but once you wrap your brain around the concepts, it will become a no-brainer for you to recognize the size, the swing and the reason for the direction of the swing.

Okay, now you have your new door, let's slam it in the ol' door hole. Calling it a doorhole is so much more furn for me than calling it a door opening. I don't know why, it just is... uhh... where was I? The first thing you have to do is get the impossibly tight knots loose you made when you strapped it on the car at Home Depot. This can take time. This would be a good project for the kids while you go inside and decompress from a Home Depot visit.

When you get the door home and off the car, it will be assembled and stapled together. In order to install it in the ol' doorhole, you will need to remove the staples in the jamb and separate the two sides. By the way, a perfect tool for this job is a pair of nippers or end-cutters that I will expound upon in the tools section. A great handtool that is very handy for many applications. I first bought this tool about ten years ago and have not been without one since....it's a great tool...

Okay, once you have taken out the staples that are holding the jamb together, gently separate the two halves. The half with hinges on it will be what you install first. For a bedroom, for example, usually it will go inside the bedroom and swinging in a logical manner such as towards the wall and not covering a light switch.

When you have the door separated, try to place the door in the hole in the middle of the opening, where you have an equal space on either side of the rough framing. This won't always be possible because the finish casing on the door might hit a wall and prevent the door from being dead center in the hole, but it's a good practice to center the door in the ol' doorhole when possible. Once you have pushed the door into the opening, the casing, which is the pretty molding stapled to the door when you bought it, should end up tight to the wall. If it is not, then something is wrong, oh so wrong. Maybe you haven't pushed the door into the opening quite hard enough or it's hitting on the drywall that may be sticking pat the rough framing. By the way, this drives me absolutely nuts and I must rant about it now. I can't freakin' stand when builders let the drywallers sheetrock walls with drywall that is not cut off flush with door openings. This will get in your way every time when you go to hang a door... drives me absolutely nuts. It makes hanging a door harder in may ways from shimming it to leveling it. If you see that the sheetrock is overhanging the door opening, take a few minutes to shave it down where it is not past the rough framing and in this way you can avoid the feeling of wanting to hammer a nail set into your ear out of frustration.

Okay, where was I? You will notice when a door is hung properly, it is level and has a consistent gap between the door and jamb all the way around it, usually an eighth to a quarter of an inch. This is very important because it if doesn't, then something is out of whack and eventually the door could stick when the house settles. Basically the door will just look very wrong when this gap is not consistent; it's very important that this gap or reveal as I will be calling it, is consistent.

After the door is in the hole, place a level on the hinge side and shift the door until it reads level. This will require you to move it one way or another in the hole until it reads plumb or level. If it doesn't end up perfectly in the middle of the hole, that's okay; this stuff isn't brain surgery. Incidentally, if the hole is too tight where you don't have enough room to shift the door in order to level it, this will rapidly increase your blood pressure and cause you to say somem very nasty things out lod about whoever the moron was that framed this door hole. I will be including a section on this site that will be a list of choice comments that I or people I have worked with have screamed in a hellish rage when encountering this phenomin. This problem can be dealt with simply enough, but it's just such an unnecessary problem that should never happen. I will expand on fixing this misery later in this section.

More to come...

dave@finishcarpentry101.com

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