On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:15:28 +0000, Stuart Noble wrote:


Was this what they call a pre hung door with its own frame etc?

Yep. Just a cheapy job, nothing fancy - I'm banking on replacing it with
something nicer in a few years. One of the kids managed to break some of
the glass in the old door, and as that one had seen better days anyway it
was a case of rushing out and buying a replacement quickly.

Out of interest, what does pre hung mean? Has the carpentry stuff for
hinges and locks been done?

I think it simply means the door comes with a frame and has the hinges
attached - I'm not sure if it provides any guarantees about lock holes
etc.

The one I got had the holes drilled / cut in the door to take standard
handles and locks (there seem to be two standards around for the size of
the circulr holes, and two for the distance from the door edge to the
centre of the holes, but modern lock kits come with bits so they'll work
with any combination).

I had to do a little bit of chiselling work on the frame though so that
it'd accept the lock-plates that I had in the lock/handle kit that I'd
bought separately.

More plaster hacking shows that my wooden lintel is 3" high and at least
that deep (can't see the far end), so I should be able to take a half an
inch section out of that to allow for a standard hardwood sill at the
bottom. I think I'd prefer that to reducing the sill thickness.

Yes, that seems reasonable, given that the span for a door frame isn't
*that* wide.

I think the typical approach is to rip everything out that's related to
the old door and its frame, measure, buy a new door that's as close as
possible to the available width - then do whatever work's necessary to
the opening to get the height right, put new door/frame in and shim out
as needed, insulate any gaps, then add trim (and seal up) to hide all
the grotty-looking stuff.

In an ideal world, but I can't get all that done in a day. Maybe not
even half of it!

Well, if you can get the door in place roughly one day, that's probably
good enough for overnight, then you can work on the rest the next.

I'm just doing the sealing and insulating on our front door this
afternoon, and I put the actual door in 3-4 weeks ago :-)

I'm still tempted by the local handyman doing it for £150, especially
as DG was his trade for 30 years. However, "Give me another ring in a
month" sounds alarm bells.

Is there any way you can get the height for the replacement door (cutting
the lintel as needed) whilst the current door's still in place? I
think that's the 'scary' bit personally - I just didn't know how long
that bit would take or what I'd find when I started hacking into the
plasterboard on teh one side, or cladding on the outside.

All the rest was pretty straightforward once I knew I had enough
width and height for the opening.

cheers

J.