Was down in Cedar Rapids this past week, working with our church group on flood recovery. Rehabbing several old homes that had had plaster walls and now had drywall. The door and window jambs thus needed to be trimmed (anywhere from 1/4″ to an inch) to be flush with the drywall.
How do you folks do this sort of thing — what tool do you use? We ended up having to use a sawzall, which obviously did a less than precision job.
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Replies
If I had room I'd probably use my power planer or a block plane.
It's usually a good idea to avoid this problem entirely by using 5/8" rock or by furring the studs - if you plane the jambs the reveal may be too small for the window stop (which can be replaced, depending on the width). You can run into problems as well with access panels (for weight pockets) and other issues as well. Best to try and maintain the original plane of wall. Trimming an 1/8" probably wouldn't be too big a deal - but 1" is crazy.
Trimming an 1/8" probably
Trimming an 1/8" probably wouldn't be too big a deal - but 1" is crazy.
Old houses, not built that well in the first place, been through a flood. Might be 1/8" proud at the top and 3/4" proud at the bottom. And definitely not "fine homebuilding" -- just attempting to make the place clean, warm, and not too unpleasant to look at, if you don't look too closely.
Dan, I've never tried this, and it might be a tad dangerous, but how about a jamb saw? Set the saw for the shallowest cut and run it along the wall, as though the wall were a floor and window jambs were the door jambs and casings. I'm sure you get the idea. It would probably get you within 1/16, then finish it off with a few passes of a hand/power plane.
Yeah, I was thinking something like a jamb saw. And 1/16" would be close enough for this kind of job.
We tried my MM but gave up -- OK for one or two windows but not 10-20.
The router jig is a good idea -- didn't think of that. I suspect our crew had a router somewhere, and we could have put a suitable jig together in 20-30 minutes.