Cutting down an internal door a lot

[Andrew Gabriel]

I need to cut down an internal door by a lot more than the thickness of the timber frame (this is a hardboard faced standard door, with a maple finish on the front, back and sides). Any suggesttions?

I was thinking of taking off and saving the maple edging strip down the hinge side, then cutting down the edge to the right width (plus a bit for finishing off. Then remove the frame piece from the cut off part, and reinsert it into the remaining door and fix to existing frame and glue to front and back. Then plane to right width minus the maple edging piece, glue that back on, and job done. Well, nearly; need to do same for reducing the height too, except there are no maple edging strips on top and bottom.

Does this sound reasonable? Anyone done something like this successfully?

[RichardS]

OK, so if I understand correctly, this is a std eggbox construction door but with a maple finish?

If so, I think what you propose is both reasonable and possible.

I had a pair of opening internal doors downstairs, separating the living room from the dining room. They were always awkward, because it required moving dining room furniture around in order to open them. They were eggbox construction doors faking 4 panel designs - so the central stiles (muntins?) were in fact moulded plastic with the void filled with folded cardboard.

What I wanted was a pair of bifold doors, so I simply sliced them right down the middle, cleared out the cardboard to a depth of about 15mm and glued in some PAR pine. Rebated, hinged and fitted together, I was stunned that they hung straight and true, and closed/stayed closed perfectly. They still do today after 8 months of frequent use.

So, I think you should be fine. You may have some difficulty in liberating and cleaning up the maple edgingstrip though.

[John Stumbles]

I've also done that to reduce the height of a victorian panelled effect door. The Hardboard front & back more or less fell off the bit of real wood (softwood in this case) I needed to reuse.

[Dave]

Yes, it was reasonably straightforward but I reduced the height. Why do the hinge side? - I guess a problem with reducing the width could be the size of the filler piece for the "lock"...

Dave S

[Nick Atty]

You can hack those doors about as much as you like. We've got one with five sides (one top corner missing), one about 5 foot high, and several cut in half to provide monster access doors to the under-purlin storage space in our loft conversion.