Adding doors to already finished openings
Hello,
I’m a do-it-yourself, amateur carpenter.
We just bought a house with finished interior openings that have no doors that open to the living room and dining room off the entryway. We’d like to install doors in these finished openings. Two openings are 36-inches wide and there is one 24-inch finished opening.
Would it be best to remove the trim and install pre-hung doors in the three openings?
Or can I install a door stop, cut mortises for hinges, and hang interior door slabs in these finished openings?
Of course, the slabs and hardware are cheaper than the pre-hung units. So I’d like to save money. But is the time involved in getting the doors hung correctly (and learning the process) more pain than the few hundred dollars of savings?
Thanks,
KJ
p.s. I don’t know why the uploaded photo is sideways. Sorry.
Replies
KJ
Sure.
If the openings are plumb and square, you can certainly hang doors to the openings. If they are out of whack, you can still do it, but it would be more difficult. It's up to you and your skill level.
After setting a whole lot of prehungs of varying quality, I can tell you this-you might even do a better job than the supplier.
In many homes, the cased openings are flown through on finish as they are there to look decent and allow the passage of individuals. Shims where they belong to hold a door true, might not exist. You might fight bows in an opening or plumb and level problems. You'd have to fit the slab to the hole b/4 cutting hinges. Routing the hinges into the jamb because using a chisel would bounce around, maybe dislodging the trim from the jamb, changing the opening. Removing the trim on the opening side might be a good compromise, you'd be able to add shims and to some extent adjust the trueness of the jamb.
Best of luck.
And, there shouldn't be a couple hundred dollars difference in a couple prehungs v. slabs and similar hardware.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I need to shop for better slabs or pre-hung doors. I was shopping at Lowes ($95 slab--$219 pre-hung). Price for the slab doesn't including the hardware.
The note about removing one side of trim and checking for/adding shims is really good. I would have never thought of that on the hinge side.
Yeah, you probably should remove the trim from one side so you can shim at hinge and latch points.
I'm buying prehungs for $120 vs. a plain slab for $78. So the cost saving is really negligible. I'd take off all the existing trim, install a prehung, then replace or reuse the trim as best I could. Trying to hang a door into what is there will undoubtedly be frustrating.