Trimming a door FAQ

I got a couple of glazed veneered chipboard doors cheap, and cut them down well into the core. Looked to be a very sturdy frame, mitred and glued - and very heavy. I screwed in metal plates across the joints, although I doubt they'd do much.

They may fail, but hey - £30 the pair on ebay.

But its 45mm thick, most interior doors are 35mm

Dave

A door made out of pine would probably shrink and split It really is the most awful material.

I'm looking for a glazed door.

Frank

One specification I've seen suggests that only 6mm* can be trimmed from each edge. On a pattern 10 internal fully glazed door the top and bottom bars are not the same height. The top seems to match the side width and the bottom much higher in height. Trimming more on the top than what is trimmed off the sides may not be cosmetically pleasing.

• Wickes a total of 20mm from the height or width but other manufactures state, where the lipping size is given, say 10mm lipping and 6mm trimming.

However, if all the trimming is at the bottom any internal fill is unlikely to be seen. The inner may not be honeycomb cardboard but MDF, ply or chipboard.

Since the bulk of the trimming is off the bottom, it ought not be that not that complicated. Cut it where you want, cut a new bottom strip the same width as the gap between the faces, apply glue, tap into place flush with the bottom. Run a block plane or some sandpaper along the sharp edges to finish it off.

I needed a bunch of small non standard sized doors when doing access doors to the remaining loft space when I did the loft conversion. I just go a couple of plain egg box doors, and chopped em into the sizes I needed, then fill the gaps in the cut edges as described above. They came out fine:

It may be easy to retrieve the lapping strip from the piece that has been cut from the bottom of the door.

As the bottom of the door will not be seen you may get away with just using smaller spacers to keep the laminate front and back apart.

None of those that I have fitted have done that. Some are 30 years old

I'm just giving an indication of how you may find a more solid sort of door. You may be able to get fire doors that are glazed?

fire resistance they need to be 44 MM thick so won't fit in a standard frame, which is designed for a 35mm door and I assume this is what Frank already has...

Dave

Dave

You can get 35mm fire doors (I have one) but i don't recall Frank saying he wants one, someone else introduced that thought?

A couple of us have given the easiest solution: cut a bit off the door you want and glue something (perhaps the original bottom filler) back in the gap. Couldn't be simpler, or faster.

And a fire door will fit a standard frame - the door stops[1] need to be positioned further back in the lining, and also need to project further from the lining to retain the fire performance. You also need (at least) three fire rated hinges.

In my case it's a fire door, but doesn't need to be, so no fancy hinges or intumescent seals, I just wanted a heavier door for sound deadening.

Well I have done that (at the bottom), and I just used my bosch power planer to trim down a suitable length of timber to be a snug fit into the gap between the front and back leaves of the door and just scraped out some of the egg box stuff, abraded away the glue remnants that fixed the egg box in place and tapped the new bit of timber in with some PVA along the mating faces and clamped it up.

Yup often a way of getting a decent heavy door for less than a cost of a engineered hardwood one. Worth sticking 3 hinges on though even if not fire rated, since they are quite heavy usually.

Thanks all for the suggestions: appreciated.

I've found Deanta doors that are solid and allow 32mm to be taken off the height and the width.

Frank

Ahem. They are not solid *wood.* They have a 'PB' core - whatever that is. Particle board?

Likely. The ones I bought from them are super heavy - maybe 30-40kg for a solid door. I think they are chipboard inside.

Theo