I felt like getting sick when I went to hang a new door in this wall. Existing house about 30 years old. It’s movedd quite a bit more than I expected on the second floor. The wall is a tad over 5/8″ out of plumb in the ht. of the door opening (standard 6-8 x 2-8 1 3/8 solid core flush door in prehung frame).
My options as I see them:
1) Rip the drywall off the length of the wall on both sides (not that much wall to contend with so it’s not as big a problem as it sounds – especially since I have three openings in this wall that I’ll have to contend with eventually). Install new drywall shimmedd plum at every stud. Now the frame is too narrow to fit what will be essentially a fatter wall.
2) Install the frame to match the existing wall and try to re-mortise the hinges in the frame to account for the out of plumbness of the wall. Won’t work since this would change the hinge pin offset from the stop and the door would have to be modified as well.
3) Rip tapered filler pieces for both sides of each jamb and live with the gawdd-awful look that would result wit the frame installed plumb.
4) ….. other suggestions.
The door will *have* to be installed plumb without question. Can’t have doors opening by themselves or hitting the floor before opening 90*!
No, re-building this wall is not an option.
Replies
Can you plumb the wall as is? Cut the nails and tap the wall into place?
You get out of life what you put into it......minus taxes.
Marv
No chance to move the wall, Marv. Center bearing wall. The house has moved and I don't think I'll be able to move it back! (grin)
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Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
"The door will *have* to be installed plumb without question. Can't have doors opening by themselves or hitting the floor before opening 90*! "
Funny to me , you say all the right things are out of limit to you. I guess I took a mechanics veiw point a long time ago. Here to me is what should be done ;
1. With out question the wall needs fixed.
2. I dont understand you trying to take responibility for the problem when you didnt build the house.
Present to the customer you need to fix the wall or hang the door . I have a cabin that I did just the same thing . I hung the door , but Im ashamed of it . Truth of the matter , it isnt my fault. It was an out side bearing wall and it wasnt moving ! Two doors as a matter of fact. If you are working on a really nice pad , I guess you could refuse to hang the door. But either way , its a customer decision. [ not yours because they need to aprove a work order] If you are trying to get a quick fix answer that I can tell you know isnt comming , then I guess you can delay the enivitable. The door will never look right hung wrong . You already knew that though.
Tim Mooney
Tim -
I guess I'm misrepresenting myself here. I'm the home owner *and* contractor.....(grin) Bought the house as a retirement remodel project.
I've pretty much decided my course of action but will review the other comments here before I tear into it. The 'right' thing to do is to rip the existing drywall down, shim both sides of the wall plumb, then arrive at a suitable trim/casing detail to deal with the resulting increased wall thickness given that I've already bought and startedd finishing the door slab and jamb - the latter being 4-7/16" for a regular 2x4 stud wall with 1/2" drywall either side. I think I have a plan, though, that will fit with some other aesthetic excentricities I'm experimenting with.
Don't beat yourself up over that cabin door. Everything we do is part of our 'ejicashun' so chalk it up to class time.
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Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Im glad you responded back . I worried that I didnt spend enough time writing the first post and Im not over the cabin doors . I felt it was too blunt an answer . My apology.
We have a little discussion going in a rental thread . Ive been talking about leaving pride sometimes and letting it roll. Ive done that with some rentals and C class repos. Its not well thought of to give it patch it up advice here , but I know we all have the situations that call for some of it.
My cabin was way worse than your problem in type and not near as important as your home. I bought my cabin when I was healthy and thought very little about the work I saw . I didnt mention it but but my wall is two and a half inches out on 7 feet . If I would have wanted to fix it , it had no foundation left under it . Impossible for what the cabin is worth too . I thought I stole it but Ive changed my mind . Someone put in a bath room that looked new and started a kitchen. No septic. I thought no problem until I hit solid rock one foot down. The septic guy laughed and loaded his hoe , so I rented one . My wife bought light fans and was attempting her first one out of the box and said ; Ive never seen this type of wire before . It has cloth around it. I rewired it . The roof leaked like a holey barn , but I knew that .Didnt take long to roof it , just a week and a half after my surgery. I turned the water on after putting in a sand filter for the water we couldnt stand to look at out of the well. Had to build a covered deck to hyde the tank. Bought an additional pump and turned it on to the house from the new tank of water. That took two days sawing into walls and floors to patch the frozen pipes. Be really funny if my name was Lucky. Boss should enjoy reading this one .
I havent had any good luck yet , but if I do , Ill post back .
Happy Thanksgiving
Tim Mooney
Tim -
Certainly no need to apologize. In fact, I thought your reply was quite considerate.
Your cabin story reminds me of the first house we ever owned. 1920's or so vintage. Someone had bootlegged in an extra room in the attic with stairs as bad as an Amsterdam hotel. Celing joists were no more than 2/4's. I used that space as a study while I was going to school. No heat up there but had one outlet so I plugged not only my desk lamp, chorded electric eraser and boom-box but a small electric heater.
Later when we tore the place apart to remodel it I found that one plug had been wired with braided lamp chord. Not only that it was wire nutted to the old knob & tube wiring in the attic. The real killer (almost) was the Kemsul(sp) insultation. Looked like shredded paper. I took a handfull out to the back yard, put a match to it and it almost exploded!
Yours was, to be sure, a far more physically challenging project than mine - Here's to a happy Thanksgiving for us all and many more challenges!! Keeps us young, right! (not!!)
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Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Okay, here's one way out (assumes from your descriptionthat the wall is out of plomb as in "leaning" rather than the opening being "pantographed"):
1) pull the door stops out.
2) put a 2"x3/8" (sometimes 1/4" is enough- all we're looking for is enough extra lift from the jamb to accomodate the hinge knuckle) fillet-jamb down the hinge side - make it plomb, but inset it into the frame enough so that some relief shows for the entire length. Cut the hinges into the fillet, dado the door-stop on the hinge side to fit over the fillet (or you can cut the fillet to match the width of the door to start with if that's better to your eye. Narrow the door the 1/4 to 3/8 needed.
3) if this was an A job, we'd pull out the jambs and see if we could put in a slightly wider set and use the original door-width.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Phill -
Re-doing thee jambs and the stops was the first thing that crossed my mind. I went out of my mind when I remembered this is a one piece jamb with milled stops.
If I were more attuned to milling hardware I might consider building completely new jambs. But remember, I've got three openings within a 15' length of this wall to deal with so I think the best thing to do is get the wall surface back to plumb where it belongs. Otherwise I'll be fighting this problem to the end. I'll sleep on the idea of re-building the jambs but I've only built one door from scratch and it didn't turn out all that well.
Thanks for the comment, though. I do appreciate your, and everyone's time spent on making suggestions............
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Dennis,
I run into this type of situation often when working on old houses; often it's window jambs that are odd to the wall -- e.g., the top is shy of the new drywall and the bottom is proud.
Were you to hang this 4 9/16" jamb in this out-of -plumb wall, you have the same situation. I would extend the door jamb by twice the amount of "out-of-plumbness" and install it plumb. After that jamb is installed, the top will be flush to drywall on one side of the wall and the bottom will be flush to drywall on the other. Then rip tapered shims to fit behind the outside edges of your casing so that they lay flat.
Ripping the wall out and rebuilding it will make the perfect fix. Sometimes, for various reasons, we go for a sufficient fix. This option would fulfill the latter condition.
Tim
Tim -
I did give some thought to what you describe. What concerns is is that the frame has slightly eased edges such that I'd have to plane them to a square edge to hide the joint to any degree.
I'll give this some thought tomorrow when I have a chance to see what that width of rip would do to my hinge offsets. Could be a plan............
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
It might sound like I'm trying to sell this fix, and I'm not. But if it appeals to you, you could only extend the "non-hinge" edge. Consequently, your hinges would be okay as-is. Plus, you wouldn't have to plane the other edge -- you could just offset your extensions by 3/16" or whatever to clear the present easing.
I may not have explained the situation well enough such that many of the otherwise good suggestions simply won't work.
First, the wall is an interior bearing wall. It simply *isn't* going to get moved. I could risk comprimising the integrity of the ceiling joist/rafter ties and who knows what-all. Given a non-bearing wall or even a structural wall that didn't have the ceiling joists spliced at its top, moving the wall would be the most preferable solution, I agree.
The wall is framed with 2x4's (3 1/2") with 1/2" drywall each side - total wall thickness 4-1/2" more of less. The new door frame is 4-7/16". The opening is square (enough), the wall is out of plumb perpendicular to the wall. Thus if I align the head or the frame with the top of the rough opening, the sill ends of the frame is a good 1/2" proud of the wall on one side and shy on the other.
My course of action will be to rip the drywall off both sides of the wall, establish plumb wit butt strips and/or rips of lumber horizontally at the top and bottom of each side. Then apply similar shim stips horizontally at 16 or 12"oc to create a 'new' plane that's plumb for attaching the drywall.
This will result in a thicker wall by about 1/2" plus. I'll add new 1/2" thick to the door frame that will then be flush with the surface of the drywall. This new piece of trim will serve as the casing or trim for the frame. Drywall will be finished to this casing with 'L' metal such that there will be no casing proud of the wall.
This works well with the 'flush base' detail I'm using for the rest of the house. Drywall is cut 2 1/2" above the finished floor with the base nailed directly to the framing with no base ledge to dust, etc. (see the thread regarding flush base or no base detail discussed earlier).
I certainly respect and appreciate everyone's contributions to this question. My apologies for not having been more descriptive of the situation that may not have explained the condition sufficiently to allow more understanding. The wall isn't going to move, period. Shimming the door frame makes it too wide; shimming the wall makes the frame too narrow. Thus my solution as described.
Thanks again - when I get it all done I'll post some pictures to illustrate even better what I was up against.
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Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Maybe I'm not seeing this right; but, what you've described is to plomb the surface of the wall and leave the jamb and the door 'out-of-plomb'. If that's the case, then, IMHO, you're doing a bunch of work for nothing..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
No, no no,.... Phil. This is a *new* door I'm installing in the old out of plumb wall. The door *has* to be hung properly. Solid core 1-3/8" interior door. No way would I hang this thing that far out of plumb. Both the wall and the door will be brought back into submission! (grin)
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Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Thanks for responding Dennis. Unless I've misread your situation, that jamb is out of plomb along with the wall; unless you can move the entire wall as a unit, you're going to end up install new jambs - bummer !.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
through the level away when you remodel you go with what you've got some day if the house is made right you will be in conformity with it
so when you do this will you be corecting all the rest of the doors in the house as well? look at em the building is a whole not a part. think about it
No, not *all* the doors. We only have five hinged (interior) doors to consider in this house, upstairs, where this wall is located. Three of them are along this stretch of wall about 12-15 long. Two go into bedrooms, the other is a wiring closet that contains all the LV wiring relays, computer networking and phone line terminal board. The other three are located on the wall across the hall. Checked that wall and it's reasonably plumb and will not present such a frightening situation as this one.
But yes, if all the walls were like this and I had doors in all of them, I would fix the situation one way or the other. I've lived in houses with doors so out of plumb you had to use door stops to keep them open.
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Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Dennis
I trim new construction and I carry a sledge hammer just for those problems, otherwise I just split the difference and cut the sheetrock back where it comes in contact with casing and caulk the otherside. rough but what can you do besides tearing wall down
Mark
Establish plumb line from top of wall to floor.Remove base first, Place a 4x4 against rock and bottom plate,.Take a sledge hammer and move bottom of wall to plumb line, a little at a time.Toe nail plate , install base. You will be able to plumb wall easily, may have to patch drywall at bottom. I would use at least a 12lb maul.
mike