Small interior doors?

[Phillip Barnett]

Hi, I have what appear to be smaller than average doors, which are horrible and need replacing. Unfortunately, B&Q etc only seem to stock 198cm high doors - mine need to be 191cm high (and 68cm wide), and I don't think you can cut down most modern doors to that extent. Does anyone have any recommendations on suppliers for smaller than average doors? I'm looking for Victorian style, wood, top-half glazed, if you see what I mean, and I live in East London in a small mid-Victorian ground floor flat conversion. Cheers in advance for any help - totally clueless about this kind of thing, so be nice! Phillip

[Dave Plowman]

You'd be alright removing this much, but make it equal top and bottom.

[Simon Avery]

Hello Phillip

A nadge over an inch and a half, top and bottom? Should be do-able, but check the ends of the door to see how deep the frame is (assuming a bog-standard mdf-faced panel).

Best bet is a local joinery firm. Downside to that is that they're sometimes trade-only, but hunt around and you should be ok.

I'd go for unfinished pine frame - joiner's don't generally want to mess around glazing, panelling or finishing and the price goes up hugely if you ask 'em to. All well within the scope of basic DIY if you get the glass cut to size elsewhere.

[PoP]

I've just fitted such a door and had to trim the size down.

As the other poster advises, make sure you take an equal amount off top and bottom. The vital thing is to make sure that you don't remove too much structural meat out of the door - it'll have to be able to support the weight of the door when you've finished.

PoP

[Roger Mills]

The width is not too much of a problem - 680mm is near enough 27", and you can get 27" wide (as opposed to 30" wide) doors - but they're not quite so plentiful, and may even be dearer! [27" is about 686mm - so you can plane

3mm off each edge].

As far as the length is concerned, you need to lose about 3" off a standard

6'6" door. This is too much to cut off without some remedial action - even if you take half from each end - because you will remove the whole top and bottom frame members, and expose the hollow innards.

What I would do is this: Reduce the height, cutting it all off from one end. Dismantle the bit you have cut off in order to recover the top (or bottom) frame member. Clean this up, and glue it the exposed open end of the door - clamping it all up until the glue has set.

Before you cut it all off one end, check the position of the lock block to make sure that, by so doing, you're not going to be fitting the lock into thin air. If this is a problem, you may have to attack both ends in order to get the lock block in the right place.

Roger

[Phillip Barnett]

Thanks for the tips guys, much appreciated, especially as I've just discovered this newsgroup. Will try surgery on an unglazed door -good tip Simon... Thanks again Phillip

[Rick Dipper]

When I can cut doors to fit, I make my own.

I know the specalist door shop in town, will make doors to any shape/size/pattern, there are also many ads on the web.

How much you can cut off a door depends on how it is made, the specalist door shops know how much you can cut off, the man in B&Q knows what the cataloge looks like.

Rick