Doors to small, can I decrease door frames/jams?

P

Patsy1

Joined
8 Aug 2008
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
Country
United Kingdom
Hi,
I am doing up my house on a VERY small budget.
I have bought some second hand pitch pine cottage doors complete with hinges and locks.
All of them are too narrow for the 8 door frames I replacing doors in.
Is there an easy way to add to the frames/jams without it looking too bodged?
I'm loathed to sell them on as they were such a bargain and exactly what I want.
They are too narrow by about 1 inch to 2 inches on the worst ones.
Thanks for any help.
I can add a pics if needed.
Pat.
 
I would build out the frame to accomodate the doors, build on the hinge side it would not be noticable then
 
If it were me, I would glue and screw (make sure the screw heads are recessed) strips onto the doors to make them wide enough, on the hinge side - I imagine you'd struggle to find strips of pitch pine, but with older doors like these, an 'honest repair' using pine, could be a feature rather than a bodge perhaps? I'd be loath to reduce the width of doorways if it can be avoided.
 
trouble you have is if you are adapting a frame to a probably non standard wonky door next time you need to replace you have the same work again
always better to add to doors iff the frames are standard size

if these doors have been wet [wet stripped]i would give them 6 weeks n a dry heated room as they could shrink up to 10mm
 
Thanks, and apologies for the late response, but StephenStephen, did you mean add to the hinge side? Wouldn't it be too much strain? I do have 2 spare doors so I can match up the strips.
 
Patsy1 said:
Thanks, and apologies for the late response, but StephenStephen, did you mean add to the hinge side? Wouldn't it be too much strain? I do have 2 spare doors so I can match up the strips.
Click to expand...
Hi - Yes I did mean the hinge side, though I can't quite remember why! it's not something I've done that often (I'm just a humble diy-er) I've always done it that way, possibly because it looks less odd, and because there's marginally less weight on the closing side, so marginally less leverage strain on the hinges. It also means that I don't have to worry so much about recessing the screws I've used to fix the strip on, as I do most of the planing on the closing, rather than hinge side.
I then make sure that I'm putting the hinge screws through the added timber and into the original.
You could add half to each side, but it's more work, and i don't think it would be a problem to put it on the closing side, except I think it would look odder?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top