Has anyone used 96″ doors on a 9′ ceiling. I swear thats what I saw in a florida house not long ago, and it looked killer, but it doesn’t seem like there would be enough room left for crown, etc. I swear they were not 10′ ceilings and the doors were very high.
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I am a finish carpenter just completing a 1922 whole house restoration in the Hollywood hills of Los Angles. This home has nine foot ceilings and we have installed seven foot-six doors with a three and one half inch casing. The crown is average sized at four inches. This leaves us with twelve inches of plaster. Your desire to install eight foot doors would leave only four inches of wall if you install similar trim. I think small trim on big doors looks wrong unless they are just slab doors. I would re-think this idea.
Edited 4/20/2007 7:37 pm ET by groover
Yes, 90" doors would be a perfect fit for 9' ceilings it seems, but I havn't found 90" doors. Where did yours come from? We are looking for a 5 horizontal panel door. All I've seen is 80" 84" and 96" it seems that for a 9' ceiling, an 84" door would be understated and a 96" door would be overstated.
The doors I installed were from a custom line from T.M.Cobb and were manufactured in Oregon. I can get the specs if you are interested.
To be more specific. We are looking for a solid core molded door referred to by JeldWen and Raliabilt as a C5000 or Rockport. They do not have a 90" in their literature.
Jon S,
Obviously, your 90" Jeldwen's are seven foot six inches. They would work fine, giving you about a foot, using compareable mouldings.
what I meant was that I dont think Jeld Wen makes a 90" door. At least its not in their literature or catalog.
Jon S,
Are these doors interior and exterior. If some are exterior are they clad with anything or are the doug fir? Where do you hail from?
These are for the interior doors only. The molded solid core masonite type.
Most door companies make sizes that are not prominently featured in catalouges.For instance, I often order 2'10" doors but rarely see them listed. They were once more common size. For garages and utilities access I often get steel doors in 3'6" width. Same deal - not listed but easy to get.
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I did. 8' glass french doors between 6'x6' windows. I liked it because it was in a great room setting, I wasn't putting crown up, and I wanted the header trim to all be the same height. I like it, lets in lots of light. If I think of it this weekend I'll try and post a picture.
Personally, I don't think it will look right. The head casing will be too close to the cornice mold. If no cornice mold, it might be OK but not my cup-O-tea. In my area 7' are much more common than 7'6". I'm talking price and delivery time. Regarding 8' doors, if there are any narrow doors involved like closets, etc, I can tell you for a fact that they will look out of proportion. 8' doors look great with 10' ceilings provided they are not narrow doors and the rooms are good sized. In your case, if you really want something taller, I'd go with 7' and transoms on room-to-room doors.
Edited 4/20/2007 8:28 pm ET by Matt
You make several good points that I would agree with in general, but the ones I did violated almost all the rules you laid out. They were narrow, but full of lites so you saw the outside view, not the doors.The trim at top did not compete with cornice because it was more of a Craftsman style trim so one blended to and complimented the other.The reason teh client requested that height of door was that the room was surroneded by windows with headers to that height.
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Yes, there is always exceptions to conventions. BTW - when I said narrow doors, I meant like 2-0 or smaller. I guess I should have been more specific. OTOH, it's a little hard for me to imagine a 2-0 exterior door.... I guess that maybe in the kind of stuff you do, you run in to some odd ball stuff...
As far as head casings competing with cornice molds, the issue is more if there is not enough space between the two. For example look at the attached pic. It was supposed to be kind of a georgian/federal look. This was 10' ceilings with 8' door openings. I had tried to talk the customer into 7' or 7'6" doors and cased openings - but what do I know? He was in the "I want what I want" mode and he was the one paying for it :-). The thing was that we (both I and the cust) wanted larger cornice mold, like a 3 piece but all that would fit was the 2 piece shown. I can't remember if it was 4 5/8" or 3 5/8" crown but since he also wanted the pediments on the doors and cased openings the 2 piece was all that would fit. Anyway, I ended up having the carps put the pieces of base cap on the ceiling to give it a little more of a grand look. I really wanted the cornice mold to come down the walls somewhere close to what the height of the base was - it was 1x8 with base cap. In summary, shorter doors would have been better in this instance. What the customer was thinking was that he wanted to match the 8' front door.... which didn't make much since since it had a transom on it anyway, which to me kind of made it like a window.
Also, matching window heights with door heights is sometimes done on mid to upper end homes, but in my experience with regard to modern homes, is more prevalent in starter homes with 8' ceilings. May be a regional thing too...
In the case of the pictured home, I actually set the windows lower than the 8' openings - I think it was 7'8", which was kind of unsuual, and in part was to make the house look right from the outside too. This was one of my "on the fly" decisions since the HO had been messing with the door heights after the plans were complete.
too bad that head casing couldn't have been made a couple inches shorter on that flat piece of frieze.In the case I am thinking of, the doors were 2'0" but paired to be 4'0" french style opennings. Long time before digital so I have no photos of that job to show.I know what you mean too about owners who want what they want, regardless of reality.I had one where we openned an arch between two rooms, then his ID decided that one of the rooms neeeded a 7" crown detail to go in the ten inches left above the arch. In that same space the owner's wife wanted a curved casing and keystone detailing the arch. After a week or so of faxing drawings back and forth we went with a bullnose plaster corner on the arch and compromise the crown to 6-1/4"
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Yes.
Best in a light filled room. Your eye spends more time looking out than up
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
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put in a twelve inch architrave ( what i call a cabinet ) from top jamb to ceiling and wrap the crown around it. boom done.
i meant to say cabinet head. oops.
architrave or entablature would be the correct term.
Cabinet got me lost but cabinethead makes sense.
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entablature-nice!
Got any pics? Sounds like a cool idea that I'd like to file away for later use...
no pics of my own work. i'm sure you can find some on line tho.
We almost did that on my brothers house, but decided it looked too funny unless the doorways were wider.
We ended up going with 7' doors instead of 6'8" and they look really good. That is our standard now on 9' ceilings.
where did you get the 7' doors? Ar they wood or molded? Who were they made by? Do you have any pictures?
Jon,
I'll try and get pictures. We got them through the millwork shop we use. I think the brand they use are Masonite brand. To be honest I don't know what they, but this set was hollow core.
If you could find out, that would be great. Masonite is one of the ones who has 5 panels (Rockport) but I wasn't sure if they had 90" doors.
Jon,
I took some pictures today and really didn't do that great a job. I still need some help with the settings and stuff, but I think they are good enough. Let me know if you need more, the house we just finished framing has 7' doors in 9' ceilings and the trim on that will be done in 2 or 3 months :-)
Here is a photo album of the house so far. Don't mind the pics of the guy modelling the nail bags, that was a request . . . .sort of :-)
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=13480311&uid=2163851
Some of the pictures look goofy because I was using my wide angle lense and unless I'm shooting dead straight at something, it distorts the angles.
On the molded hardboard doors, I don't believe you will find 7'6" doors that will be proportioned properly. Those manufacturers have only a few molds to make the door skins from and you would end up with a door with an unusual top rail, bottom rail, or both. A stile and rail door could be built to any size you need.
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