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Replacing front door - not same size


AUinHsv

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Wooden front door on my house is fine. However Mom sold her house when she moved into retirment community and new owner is pretty much renovating everything so her old front door is now in my garage. It's about 60 years old and 200 pounds of old oak. She paid several hundred 30 years ago and then had it custom made so no matter what I have - it's an upgrade and it keeps it in the family. Problem is the height. My current one is 80 and this one is 79.25. How much of an issue am I getting in here. I have a general contractor doing some other work and I hope we can find a way to make it fit for obvious reasons. Is it easier to just raise the entrance threshold or should I try to lower the top threshold. Or just screw it and build a whole new frame?

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1 minute ago, AUinHsv said:

Wooden front door on my house is fine. However Mom sold her house when she moved into retirment community and new owner is pretty much renovating everything so her old front door is now in my garage. It's about 60 years old and 200 pounds of old oak. She paid several hundred 30 years ago and then had it custom made so no matter what I have - it's an upgrade and it keeps it in the family. Problem is the height. My current one is 80 and this one is 79.25. How much of an issue am I getting in here. I have a general contractor doing some other work and I hope we can find a way to make it fit for obvious reasons. Is it easier to just raise the entrance threshold or should I try to lower the top threshold. Or just screw it and build a whole new frame?

Can you not have 3/4" cut from the head or sill of the oak door ?

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interesting idea.  May have to refinish it anyhow. The contractor who took it off Mom's house stored it in garage and somehow the shellac varnish coat started pealing. No clue why because it is marine varnish but I still may have to strip and stain again.

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58 minutes ago, dingleberryswitzer said:

Could you glue/nail/screw a 3/4 inch strip of oak to the bottom?  Might have to refinish the entire thing to make it match.

That's an option if he needs to refinish the door for sure.  Lowes carries small pieces of hobby sized, oak that would work pretty easily.

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Can you send pics of the interior and exterior of the existing door?  You may want to consider that you'll probably have to re-mortise for hinges on the existing jamb, so replacing trim and lowering the header with a strip of 1X material would be pretty simple as long as your interior and exterior conditions don't cause that to open a can of worms.  

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2 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

Perhaps you might find a subscription to Door Sizing Quarterly to be helpful in your journey. Sometimes the editorial slant is a little too progressive for my tastes, but their ongoing series "Using a Tape Measure" is always a quality resource. 

Fucking arty rag..... Popular Doors for the win..... "measure once cut twice, anything worth doing, is worth doing twice", is my favorite monthly feature... that and the centerfold of course.

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28 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

Perhaps you might find a subscription to Door Sizing Quarterly to be helpful in your journey. Sometimes the editorial slant is a little too progressive for my tastes, but their ongoing series "Using a Tape Measure" is always a quality resource. 

 

23 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Fucking arty rag..... Popular Doors for the win..... "measure once cut twice, anything worth doing, is worth doing twice", is my favorite monthly feature... that and the centerfold of course.

 

16 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

Disagree - some of the shit they advocate with hinges is downright criminal. But I'll acknowledge that the centerfolds usually give me wood. 

One of my tasks in my first job out of school was coordinating the install of over 1,500 door openings that some asshole believed was economical to issue independent POs/contracts to a hollow-metal door/frame supplier, a wood door supplier, a hardware supplier, and an installer.  Drawn by an architect that subbed out the spec writing.  There was not a day where I didn't have three or four hardware/door issues to chase down.  Shudders.

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3 minutes ago, Upgrayedd said:

 

 

One of my tasks in my first job out of school was coordinating the install of over 1,500 door openings that some asshole believed was economical to issue independent POs/contracts to a hollow-metal door/frame supplier, a wood door supplier, a hardware supplier, and an installer.  Drawn by an architect that subbed out the spec writing.  There was not a day where I didn't have three or four hardware/door issues to chase down.  Shudders.

Holy shit.

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9 minutes ago, Shoxthemonkey said:

Peepholes?

Pro tip: make sure that the distance between the peephole and the mail slot corresponds to the distance between your eyes and your, ahem, "outgoing package" if you're into that sort of thing.

Just make sure you don't live too close to a school, of course... 

Edited by Prepuce of Doom
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7 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

Pro tip: make sure that the distance between the peephole and the mail slot corresponds to the distance between your eyes and your, ahem, "outgoing package" if you're into that sort of thing.

Just make sure you don't live too close to a school, of course... 

20 year subscriber to Door Peep and Perv right here ^^^^^

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