Trimming a door FAQ

Normally doors have solid wood at the edges with a hollow/honeycomb/glazed/... middle, with the expectation you'll take equal parts off each side to make it fit. Do the suppliers say how wide their edge strips are? I wouldn't have thought taking 11mm off each side would be unusual. If you tried to take

My only experience of buying doors is sight-unseen from:

Theo

You can generally check where you can see the change in direction of grain at the top and bottom of the door.

I would have thought a glazed door would be solid wood BICBW. I doubt a solid glazed door would cost much more?

The lock areas should have more wood.

What warranty would you need?

Get one made of solid wood.

And add your own glazing

I think on the 'oak'/'ash'/etc doors, they're actually made of pine structure but with oak veneer, including oak battens on the edges. The thickness you can cut is the depth at which you run out of the batten and into the pine.

Yes, but may be pine and not oak. It doesn't matter for holding the lock in, but does matter if it's on display.

Theo

Back in the day these doors were made of solid wood and it was no problem to trim off the amounts you are talking about. These days they tend to be particle board (chipboard ) that are veneered if requiring a particular wood finish or moulded with a foil. Lipping is added to the edges but these days that tends to pretty minimum no leaving much to trim down, one manufacturer I noted limited to trimming to 6mm top and bottom giving 12mm in total before the inner particle board was exposed. Exposing the core on the bottom or top edge may not be an issue but can be a problem as my SiL found when he spilled a glass of water and the water went under a door that had been trimmed back more than specified. In his case the door swelled and split the outer foil. Fortunetly, it was a new build and still covered by the developers warranty and they replaced the door as it obviously had been incorrectly fitted. This may explain why the supplier will not honour a guarantee if the door is trimmed beyond specified limits.

The only solution that I can think is trim the door slightly more than required and add lipping to bring back to the dimensions you require but this will not preserve any supplier guarantee.

Richard

Or go to a joiner and get a solid wood door to start with

Yes but it will come at a price especially if the OP wants a particular hardwood finish, he has not mentioned that particular detail.

Get a solid door is the obvious answer, but there is an alternative ... If, as I expect, trimming exposes the core then it's fairly easy to make and glue-in a filler piece of wood. It's at the top and/or bottom so won't be visible. If it's an "engineered" door the core will be something solid (chipboard?) and the filler piece won't be needed unless you want to route out a piece so you can let-in some hardwood to match the facings.

I would say your suppliers are being helpfull by not selling something that does not fit.

Almost all doors are a honeycomb or similar core with typically 10mm of lipping round the door. I had this issue with a house in Spain with short doors and had to have a door custom made.

After a bit of googling I found that Deanta doors allow 32mm reduction in height but don't see the Pattern 10 you want.

I think you are just going to either order a custom door, modify the frame, or perhaps use something that isn't pattern 10.

Dave

I tried for ages and couldn't find a supplier of solid wood doors. They are all honeycomb core with lipping.

Dave

My experience is that a proper hardwood door is very little more expensive than a POS cardboard door

― Leo Tolstoy

He only need 1mm from each side to get down to 760 from 762. The 19mm top and bottom may be more of an issue.

"The core" can vary depending on the type of door. Some will be egg box style doors with solid wood strips only at the perimeter, and (usually) cardboard grid glued in between the panels. The edge strips are usually deep enough to fit hinges and create a strong frame for the door.

Another type is the "engineered" solution with a MDF or chipboard core, and then slim lippings on the edges all round. The lipping may only be quite thin (say 6mm) - enough to make it look like a hardwood, without actually needing to use much hardwood.

The former are easy enough to work with if you need to chop off all of the wood strip on an edge. You can just push some of the visible cardboard spacing out of the way, plane up a bit of timber to the right thickness, glue it up, and tap it mack into place.

The engineered ones will just expose the core. On the sides where this is visible that would not look good - so you would need to cut off 6mm more than required on each side, and glue on a new lipping. (where the new lipping could be the original one that you cut off first - in effect take the edge off, then a bit of the core, and stick the edge back). If the edge you need to cut more deeply is the bottom, you might not care what it looks like, just seal it with something and be done with it.

This is more of a product limitation rather than a supplier being difficult. However since you probably don't care about the warranty anyway, does it matter if you void it?

If you don't mid hacking cheap doors about a bit they can be quite a good source of material for projects... For example, I had a request for help doing a 6' wide L shaped shelf that was to run at a high level above a computer desk. The deepest bit was about 3' dropping to 2' for most of the width.

The easy and cheap way to do it was to buy a basic "pre-primed" egg box door from wickes, hack it about and refit edges. Then plant an additional wide edge on the front facing bit to allow a roundover to be routed onto it. The result was pretty good - lightweight, strong, and cheap:

The long sides are OK, it's the short edges which need reducing to get the height down to 1960mm: 1981 -> 1960, so 21mm to take off spread over each short edge.

Frank

I'm looking for a painted white finish so there's no need for a particularly grain-pretty wood.

Frank

I did see an engineered door with a chipboard core so that may be a less expensive option though I'll pay a visit to the local joiner.

Frank

The manufacturer (XL Joinery?) say it has 11mm lippings all around, and is only good for trimming by up to 6mm ...

As John Rumm says, cut it down and patch it up. In fact the width is not a problem - 2mm only. You won't ever see the top or the bottom edge of the door so if you have a solid core door just cut it down. When you have finished trimming and sanding maybe seal the edge with paint or varnish, that's all you will need to do.

Tim W