Doors

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve installed the four exterior doors. There are two doors in the walkout basement wall, and two up on the main floor. Now that the wind doesn’t blow through the house, it stays a lot warmer inside, which makes it more pleasant to do interior work.

The doors were all pre-hung in their frames, which made installation relatively straightforward, though each one took most of a morning to install. Briefly, you set the door into the caulked rough opening, put three shims on each vertical side of the frame to snug it against the posts, then put screws through the frame and shims and into the posts. I chose to use screws instead of nails because the door already included two long screws and instructions for putting them into the top hinge, and it seemed like a good idea to use screws at the other attachment points. The screws are easier to remove if a mistake is made, and they don’t look bad since they are hidden when the door is closed.

I also found that the doors were perfectly square, with very small gaps between the door and its frame, so that if the shims were pushed in too tightly, the door wouldn’t close. It also didn’t work to try to align the door frame with the less perfect rough opening in any way, because this would also push the frame out of square and cause problems with closing.

The doors on the main floor required blocking underneath them for support. This part isn’t clearly shown in the instructions for the house. Because the door sticks out about 3.75 inches into the outside world from the edge of the floor, the bottom of the door needs to be supported for those 3.75 inches. I used two pieces of 2x10 sill plate planks cut to the width of the rough opening, placed flat against the sheathing, resting on top of the sill plate. Then I placed a treated 2x4 flat side down on top of the 2x10s. This made the support level with the floor, which is also made from 2 inch planks resting on 10 inch beams. The door sticks out just a little beyond the 2x4, which provides a kind of drip edge and should prevent water from getting under the door. We used plenty of silicone caulking under the doors, but it seemed best to make sure no water gets under there in the first place.

These little lessons were just more examples of how much more one learns from mistakes and experience on the job than from books or instructions or even videos.