Holes in HW floors; installing thresholds

Nov 21, 2004 3 Replies

Hi,



I hope someone can offer me advice on my situation.



I've had old, unattractive hollow core doors throughout the inside of my house replaced with pre-hung, solid wood doors. The new frames are slightly different from the old ones, and gaps in the hardwood floors have become exposed. These gaps can be as big as 1/4" by 1" or thereabouts.



One idea I have for covering up these gaps is to install interior thresholds on the problematic doorways. Cutting the thresholds to perfectly wrap around the door frame, especially the moulding, seems difficult if not impossible.



My questions are: should I simply try to cut the ends of the threshold as best I can, and accept imperfections, or should I cut, say 5/8" off the bottom of the door frame and slide the threshold underneath? Is there a power tool that would help me make a good cut so close to the floor?



Alternatively, is there a better way to fill these gaps? Some of the gaps run the full width of the door frame's moulding, and it might look a little strange to have the threshold going that far.



Thank you, Bob Alexander


If you install thresholds you will have to trim the door bottoms, right? Wouldn't it make more sense to cut some wood pieces to fit the hole/gaps and cement them in with construction adhesive? A little smoothing with chisel and sandpaper followed by stain/varnish would make them virtually invisible and involve significantly less work than trying to fit in thesholds.

There's a hand tool called a flush cut saw. Look it up on Amazon.com or Harbor Freight Tools, for example. Good luck.

Joe

jamb saw:

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Brace yourself for bad news. No power tool. Just a simple hand saw. Yes, you will have to use some muscle power. Home Depot (as well as others) has a dovetail saw with an offset handle that is made for jobs like that. I think I paid $10 for mine. Simple to use. Push, pull, repeat as needed. Ed

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