• Different types of door
• Internal and external door frame construction
• Common door problems
• Removing and straightening warped doors
• Altering a door frame
• Repairing and replacing damaged door frames
Warped or damaged doors need not necessarily be scrapped: very often you can save money by carrying out your own repairs to the door itself, or by modifying the frame or door stops to accommodate the damage
Doors and door frames are as susceptible to damage as any other part of the woodwork in your house. And although you can buy new doors and frames ‘off the peg’ to replace rotten or damaged ones, you can save yourself a great deal of money by carrying out simpler repairs and maintenance before it is too late. We describe some of the steps you can take to rectify simple door problems,dealing with the specific problems found on traditional, side-hinged garage doors. Re-read these pages before you start work.
Types of door
There are three basic types of door: the ledged and boarded door; the panelled door; and the flush panelled door. Standard sizes of most types are available, but remember that interior doors are usually narrower and thinner than exterior doors. Softwood is the most common construction material, although hardwood, metal and plastic are also used. Ledged and boarded doors: These are made from vertical tongued and grooved boards, nailed to horizontal ledges and diagonally braced.
The simplest doorframe of all—a doorway in a stud partition wall. Removal and replacement of this kind of door frame is comparatively easy.
The diagonal members resist the tendency to sag, and a stronger version has vertical stiles on the shutting edges to which the ledges are attached. Most locks can be fitted to this type of door, although the diagonal braces must be retained to resist sagging and warping.
Panelled doors: These have a solid frame made up from vertical stiles and horizontal rails which enclose the panels. The panels can be made from plywood or glass, and are usually fixed by mouldings running around the inside of the frames. One side of the panel fits into a rebate and butts against the moulded edges of the stile and rail; a matching bead is pinned and glued to the other side of the panel to hold it in place. Panelled doors are available in a variety of sizes, and you can plane the edges to suit the size and shape of your opening.
Flush panelled doors: These usually consist of an internal wooden frame to which a plywood or hardboard facing is pinned. Between the two facings you will often find insulating or fire-resistant material—although some exterior doors are solid. Because the facing panels help to prevent the door sagging, the stiles and rails are often very narrow. When you buy a new door, therefore, make sure that it is as near the same size as the frame as possible or you may run out of timber to plane off the edges. Some flush panelled doors have a plasticized coat on the facing for use in bathrooms and if you must plane a door like this, protect the coat by lining the edges with masking tape. Afterwards you can protect the bare timber with polyurethane lacquer.
Doorways and linings
Doors need doorways as most carpenters knows, and it is very often the door frame rather than the door which requires your attention. Again there are three basic types, each one intended for a different type of wall construction. The simplest type of frame construction— used in stud partition walls—consists of lining boards at the top and on each side of the opening.
These can be bolted, screwed, or nailed to the wall studs. A similar construction is used for doorways in brick partition walls, though in this case the lining is often attached to a timber ground which is fixed directly to the brickwork. The ground and/or lining may be fixed to the wall with screws and plugs, with fixing cramps, or with screws driven into wooden blocks set into the brickwork itself. If you need to, you can find out exactly how the frame is fixed by prising off one of the vertical architraves, chipping away the plaster, and looking in the gap between the lining and the surrounding masonry. Either of the above types of construction can use rebated or planted stops and both are surrounded by wooden architraves. The architrave is simply a timber moulding which is nailed over the joint between the wall plaster and the doorway lining to conceal the gap. It is usually pinned to the lining with a mitred joint at the top corners, and can easily be prised away undamaged.
Should you need to do this, knock out the old nails and refix it with new nailing, then fill the old nail holes with putty before repainting. Exterior doorways are slightly different. Here a hardwood sill is usually an integral part of the frame, which is itself fitted directly into the opening and is secured to the surrounding masonry by galvanized steel fixing cramps.
The cramps and door frame are fixed into the wall as the brickwork is erected. Sometimes the horns of the frame-ends which project horizontally from the top of the main frame are also built into the wall. Exterior door frames are much more likely to suffer from wet rot than interior ones, so on most door frames the gap between the frame and the wall is sealed with non-hardening mastic to prevent moisture getting in and attacking the frame from behind. For the same reason, the gap should also contain a vertical damp-proof course of PVC or bituminous felt.
Sticking doors
Sticking doors can be caused by sagging joints in the door itself, by sticking hinges, or by a damaged door frame. Planing the edges of the door or resetting the hinges may cure minor problems, but to repair bad cases you will have to completely dismantle and refurbish the door and its joints, and/or the door frame. An interior doorway in a brick partition wall—structurally stronger than a stud partition door frame but more trouble to replace interior door in partition wall.
Twisted or warped doors
Panelled and ledged and boarded doors are prone to twisting and warping. When this happens, the door does not close properly and the lock and latch often mismatch. Unfortunately, in the case of ledged and boarded doors there is not much you can do to rectify this other than complete refurbishment or replacement. You could try replacing the most badly twisted boards, or screw a couple of sturdy ledges to the exterior face of the door, but this is not always successful. Panelled doors are as difficult to rectify, but your chances of success are higher. However, if the door is glazed, remove the glass before trying to carry out any work. The first solution to try is forcing the door against its twist.
Close the door until it just touches the doorstop, then measure the gap where the door does not touch. Cut and shape a wooden block slightly larger than this gap and fit it between the door and the stop at the point where they first touch. Force the door shut along its length, wedging it firmly in place for two or three days while the house is empty during the day and at-night. A method that is more likely to succeed involves a good deal more work. Remove the door and place it on a bench with the side towards which the stile twists facing upwards. Remove the nailed beading on this side and with a tenon saw make a number of saw cuts across the stile in the area where the curve is greatest, cutting halfway through it . Cramp the door to the bench to pull it flat. Next mark cutting lines for notches 25-40mm wide either side of the saw.
Follow by marking the depths of the notches—which should be no more than a third the thickness of the stile—on the edges of the stile. Use a sliding bevel to make the edges of the cut-out slightly undercut like a dovetailed joint. Then remove the waste with a tenon saw and a bevel edged chisel. Cut softwood wedges to fit each cut-out, making them slightly longer than the width of the stile and with the grain running in the same direction. Tap the wedges into the cut-outs and release the cramps to see if the door remains flat—it may be necessary to recramp the door and tap the wedges further in if it remains curved. When the door is flat, cramp it up again, mark the wedges for length, remove them and cut them to the correct size.
Glue them up and replace them, allowing the adhesive to dry before removing the cramps for the last time. You can then plane the wedges flush, fill the saw cuts with wood putty and repaint the door. If possible, change the hanging side of the door so that the hinges keep the repaired stile true. Altering the doorstop The easiest solution to the problem of a twisted door is to alter the doorstop, though this sometimes has the disadvantage of being unsightly. Planted doorstops are removed simply by prising them away from the frame with a bolster or screwdriver. But first run the point of a knife down the inner corners of the stop on both sides to prevent unnecessary damage being done to the paintwork.
Remove only those stops on the lock side and along the top of the door; leave the stop on the hinging side where it is. Push the door to its closing position, filing the lock’s striking plate if necessary. Remove the old nails from the stop, then re-nail the stops so that they bed as consistently as possible against the door. Fill the old nail holes before repainting the stops. In bad cases, the stop will form an unsightly margin with the architrave and you may have to plane it slightly to follow the contour. If the doorstop is rebated, you will have to cut the stop to the new alignment. Remove the striking plate, close the door until it touches the stop, then measure the gap at its widest point. Plane a small block of wood to this size to use as a gauge.
Place the block against the edge of the door where it touches the stop and, with a pencil on one side of the block, run it up the length of the door marking a line on the doorstop. This will show how much wood you have to remove to accommodate the warp. Score down the line with a metal straightedge and a sharp knife to prevent the paint from tearing back. Repeat the operation on the inside edges of the stop. Then, starting at the narrowest end, cut in towards the lining with a firmer chisel and a mallet. Alternate your downward cuts with cuts into the inner corner of the the lining.
When all the wood is removed, use a rebate plane to tidy up the inside edges. Finally, replace the striking plate in a different location and chisel out a new rebate to engage with the lock on the door. Frame repairs The most common form of damage to door frames is wet rot, which may make the timber swell and consequently cause the door to stick or parts of the frame to pull away from their wall mountings. Depending on the extent of the damage, you may be able to remove the rotted section and patch it with new timber. If so, you should use a lapped joint and secure the new section to the wall with masonry bolts as described.
For a professional finish, lay a strip of polyethylene or PVC between the repair and the masonry, and reseal all the joints at the wall with a non-hardening mastic. This prevents the wet from attacking timber from behind, where it is unprotected by the paint on its outer faces. Bear in mind that although paint protects the timber beneath it, urban grime attacks the paint and gradually reduces its effectiveness to the point where rot can gain a foothold.
Regular cleaning therefore helps to protect the timber from rot and also enables you to identify problem areas before it is too late. You will quite probably see the first signs of rot as bubbling on the paint’s surface. If the rot is too extensive to be patched, you will have to instal a new frame. Fortunately, this is a less daunting prospect than it seems. Your first step is to measure the dimensions of your opening and the size of your D. One method of curing warps in a panelled door. The saw cuts should go no deeper than the level of the panels, and the wedges should stick out at both ends when hammered in door—assuming that you do not wish to alter the dimensions—and to either purchase a frame of the appropriate size and dimensions, or to make one yourself (a technique covered further on in the Carpentry course).
Many larger timber or builders‘ merchants supply door sets consisting of a door and door frame with all surfaces sealed and primed, a lock, lift-off hinges, and full fitting instructions. These save time and a good deal of work. But if you need only to replace the frame, measure up the old one—particularly its overall width and height—and purchase a new one compatible with your existing door. If you want to refit the old door, the inside jamb measurement will need to be the width of the door or less; it will be no good if the door is too small for the frame, though you can plane down a door that is too big.
Remove the door and place it on its side out of the way. If the door frame is butted against the floor and not built into a wooden threshold, prise it loose carefully with a crow-bar working from the bottom upwards. If the horns of the top rail are built into the wall, use an old saw to cut through the rail then prise it off, wriggling both ends free from their mountings. Where the frame has a built-in hardwood threshold, do the same here so that you can prise the jambs free from the wall. When the frame is out, brush down the walls and examine them. Sometimes frames are fitted to brick walls by screwing to wooden blocks built in to the brickwork and if this is the case you may be able to use the existing blocks. But remove them if they are loose or rotten and insert new ones, making sure that they are firmly packed and mortared into the brickwork.
With a heavy pencil or chalk, mark the positions of the blocks on the wall to one side of where the frame will stand. This will make it easier to locate and screw into them. Next, put the frame in position and use a level or plumbline to establish the vertical. Lightly mark the frame opposite the blocks in the wall as a guide for drilling the screw holes. Then remove it and drill countersunk holes which you can fill later. Place the frame back in position, level it and check its diagonal dimensions to make sure that it is true; then fix it to the wooden blocks using No. 8 woodscrews 75-100mm long.
You may need to pack small battens between the frame and the wall to take up any unevenness, so bear this in mind and keep checking the squareness of the frame as you screw into the bricks or studs. If the old frame is fixed with galvanized steel cramps, you will be unable to re-use the old cramps. So, when you place the frame in its experimental position, mark on it suitable positions for fixing screws drilled directly into the masonry.
You will have to drill into firm brickwork— not the mortar joints—so mark the positions accordingly. Then remove the frame and drill at least three holes on each jamb to take No. 8 or 10 countersunk wood-screws 65-100mm long. Afterwards, replace the frame, level it, and check its diagonal dimensions to ensure it is square. Wedge the frame temporarily in its true position, and mark through the drill holes into the brickwork with a long masonry nail. Then, before you remove the frame, mark its position clearly on the wall so that you can match the holes later.
With this done, remove it and drill the holes in the brickwork with a masonry bit of the correct size. Insert wall plugs to match the screw size you are using and replace the frame aligned with the marks just made. Finally, to finish off the project, fill all the holes in the frame with a proprietary wood filler and then point around the door frame with a 1:3 mortar mix. When the mortar has set apply a liberal amount of nonhardening mastic to all the joints.