New Cabinet Hinges - Half A Hole Off - 68 Times!

[DerbyDad03]

I'm painting the stick built kitchen cabinets and left SWMBO in charge of choosing the hardware. She found handles she liked so I gave her the specs for the hinges (3/8" inset, surface mount) so she could find some to match the handles. She doesn't want Euro hinges, she wants to see the hardware.

The vertical spacing on the new hinges match the face frame holes perfectly, but they are half a hole off horizontally. 17 doors, 34 hinges, 68 holes. I suspect that the existing hinges are original to the house, so they are over 60 years old. The new hinges are self-closing and the body is just a little bit wider.

If I use the existing holes, they move the doors over just enough that the partial inset on the handle side rubs on the face frame *before* the doors are painted. Unfortunately, I'm already done painting 2/3's of the doors, so I don't want to alter the doors and have to repaint.

I just spent a thrilling evening drilling and plugging 68 hinge holes so the new screws will have solid wood to bite into. Luckily my chisels are scary sharp, so I was able to easily shave off any plug that stood proud.

Great, now I can get back to task I hate the most: Painting.

[Sonny]

68 is a nice number. Think (positively) of it as an early Holiday gift. Got eggnog? I picked up 2 half gallons of Pennsylvania Dutch last night.

Sonny

[Dave in SoTex]

Down here it's Promised Land for eggnog. You can just dip your bread in it to make french toast.

Dave in SoTex

[DerbyDad03]

Actually, it's a holiday gift for the "kids". They are all (4 + 2) coming home for Thanksgiving. I'm painting all the "public" spaces, put new trim in the living room and the carpet installers just left. One son knows about the painting, another knows about the carpet, but they've both been sworn to secrecy.

I've got 1 weekend and 9 evenings to finish the kitchen, hang pictures, knick this and knack that. It's going to be close. I may end up enlisted a son or two to help me hang the cabinet doors. I'm too tired to stress about getting it done before they arrive. We also have to clean out the bedrooms where we've been stashing stuff during the project.

BTW...the carpet installers said "We rarely install carpet this thick. This is nice stuff!" My feet are smiling. ;-)

[DerbyDad03]

Sh!t. Add "Trim all doors" to the list. Carpet's too thick for the doors to fit.

[Sonny]

. Got eggnog? I picked up 2 half gallons of Pennsylvania Dutch last nigh t.

Yep, time to stock up on that eggnog.

Gave/giving us a holiday gift, also. Repaired the patio roof, where a tre e limb fell through. Signed a contract this morning for a contractor to re

-roof the rest of the house. He's to call to designate the particular day to start.... giving me time to have the electrical service to temporarily m ove power lines.

Sonny

[russellseaton1]

I had to cut down a dozen or so doors at my parents after they installed new carpet. Having a Festool track saw makes that job much easier. Hardest part was getting the bi fold closet doors back on correctly.

[Clare Snyder]

They ARE a bugger, arn't they? The solid panel type are not TOO bad, but the louvered ones????? YEW!!!

[DerbyDad03]

Mine aren't solid. I hope I have enough bottom rail...I should. I don't recall if I shortened them the last time we had carpet installed.

I once had to shorten a hollow core door so much that I needed to glue in a new bottom rail. My son lived in a basement "apartment" at a friend's house. (It was really just a bedroom but he had his own bathroom.) The staircase came down the center of the house to a landing. Turn left, down a step (2 risers) and you went into the laundry area, turn right, down a step (2 risers) and you went into my son's room. He had no door when he moved in, so we bought a $25 door at a salvage store, cut it down and hung it over the step. (I forget the reason, but we couldn't hang it on the landing) We actually hung it upside down so that the door knob was a bit closer to normal height when the user was on the landing since the bottom of the door was a full step down.

Anyway, we had to cut so much off that we needed to insert a new bottom rail into what used to be the top of the door.

So, we measure the height from the step to the ceiling, cut/fix the door, build a frame and hang the door. We try to open it and it hits the ceiling when it's about 2/3's open. Who knew that a "dropped ceiling" meant that it dropped about an inch over the width of a door. We had to take the door off, back up the stairs and cut about 2" off of the top to get it to open fully. Then we had to add a strip to the top of the frame to hide the gap.

It was a funny looking door, but my son's girlfriend liked it a lot better than the curtain that was there before. ;-) That was all that separated them from the rest the housemates when they used to laundry.

[Clare Snyder]

I had to cut off top AND bottom when I tiled the foyer.

Been there, done that

[DerbyDad03]

First door I ever cut was a steel entry door. Back door of a walkout basement.

Special order door was more than I could afford at the time. Stock door and metal cutting blade for my POS Craftsman circ saw did the trick.

[Puckdropper]

Did you have to make any adjustments to the weatherstripping and threshold? The tile in the kitchen prevents the door from swinging freely over the thinnest entry mat I can find, so I'll have to fix that some time.

Puckdropper

[DerbyDad03]

No. In my case the floor was exactly where it needed to be; it was the ceiling that was too low. :-)

I have low ceilings in my basement, so I took the top out of the frame, cut down the sides and cut an inch or so off the top of the door. The door opens in, so I wasn't worried about exposing the foam innards. I did slather some polyurethane onto the exposed foam just to "seal" it, but who knows if that was necessary. I put the top of the frame back on and shoved it into the opening. 30 years later everything still seems to be fine.

I had the opposite problem after they installed the very plush carpet last week. My front door opens right into the living, i.e. no foyer. There's a small entry area where there has never been hardwood or wall-to-wall carpet, just some linoleum with a throw rug to wipe your feet on. I removed everything that was there, down to the sub-floor, before the new carpet was installed.

I had them install the new carpet like the previous stuff was, on top of the hardwood that butts up to the entry area. By the time they were done, the thickness of the hardwood, pad and carpet left the carpet a little more than an inch above the entry way sub-floor.

I then laid a piece of 1/2" plywood and a piece of luan in the entryway and laid Mannington AduraMax vinyl plank, which is 5/16" thick. That brought it up to just a tiny bit below the height of the carpet. No trip hazard in either direction and it's level as far as vacuuming. I didn't even need a transition strip. I ran the plank right into the closet. (The paint is drying on the new closet door right now.)

The owner of the carpet store gave me the box of the AduraMax ($120) for free. It was left over from another job and just taking up room on a shelf. One box was just enough. I have one full plank left over. Tough install for a first timer like me. More cut pieces than full planks. Learned a bunch...ready to do the kitchen after Thanksgiving.

[Puckdropper]

I'll have to keep an eye out for that. I would think this door can be trimmed 1/4 to 1/2" without any problems, but you never know if someone's already done it.

That looks amazing! It sounds like your carpet is such good quality it won't start unraveling or tearing as it sees traffic. I'm putting a transition strip on the tile to carpet transition just to keep it from doing that. It's already showing signs.

Puckdropper

[DerbyDad03]

It might depend on how the carpet was installed. All of my open edges (the

2 by the entry and the 4 doorways upstairs) were installed using the Turn and Tack method as shown below. There are no exposed edges to unravel or tear.

Oh wait, there is metal between the kitchen and living room. That'll go away when I plank the kitchen, but there probably be a transition strip of some type. You don't typically leave an exposed edge at a kitchen because you need to be able to mop.