Customized Doors for Dummy Carpenters

If you've ever looked for project plans and advice online, you're pretty likely to have run across freelancers pretending to have done it themselves. Many times, however, the writer simply went to a site like This Old House or The Family Handyman and recorded instructions they found there. You know how to tell? Well, whoever wrote the original has absorbed background knowledge the freelancer doesn't know – and it shows. A case in point? eHow.com's Ruth de Jauregui as she gave it up for "How to Make an Angled Wood Door for Under the Stairs" (now living at Leaf Group niche site Hunker.com).

Let's give Ruth some props: she got the basic outline of the process pretty much right, as befits "royalty" among the contributors to that site (she was for years the in-house forum moderator). It was the little things, however, that gave de Jauregui away as having little or no idea what she was talking about in this post (guess they don't teach woodworking in art school). To begin with, we're not sure why she found it necessary (other than that DMS requires an introduction) to "inform us" that

"While most closet doors are between 18 and 30 inches wide, you may be forced to adjust the height of door [sic] to accommodate the angle of the stairs..."

"...height of door"? Not only was Ruth missing the article, you don't merely adjust the door's height, you have to reshape it to match the opening. Talk about underselling your topic... So let's see how Ruth 'splained how someone's gonna do this to a door: "[Build] a custom-height door using a readily available hollow-core door blank..." Sure, that'll do it. Let's see what Ruth's instructions said. First, she went into massive detail about how to cut the door, with all manner of tips on how to prevent the edges of the cut from splintering; though she forgot to tell us to set a circular saw's cutting depth to just slightly more than the thickness of the door. Guess she figured anyone who'd tackle this job already knows this tip (or it wasn't in her reference). Where de Jauregui went wrong is in this sequence: "Measure the width and length of the open space at the top of the door. Remove any foam filler inside the door to a depth of 2 inches. Cut a piece of 1-by-2 board to fit into the hollow space."

There! Did you see it? We did: here, Ruth was describing the process known as re-stiling a door. She made a couple of errors here, though: first, a hollow-core door for the interior is highly unlikely to have foam filler; the two sides are kept apart by a coil of corrugated cardboard glued in place. No big deal, though... but that second part? No way does a 1 x 2 fit that spot, since a standard hollow-core is stiled with wood whose actual dimensions are one inch wide and two inches thick. If the nominal dimensions are 1 x 2, the piece of wood is, in reality ¾" by 1½" – meaning you'd need to rip the new stile (actually, it's a rail) from a 2 x 4! Jeez, Ruth... oh, well, at least you talked about the process...

Ruth followed up with detailed instructions about finishing your new door, then told you to

"Attach the hinges and doorknob according to the package directions. Hang the door in the doorframe."

Wow – that was simple. No talk of how to frame the rough opening, custom-build a door jamb, or add casing molding; just "cut the door" and "hang the door." We suspect the OQ wanted more than that, but it would have been beyond the scope of eHow – not that it wasn't already beyond the scope of our Dumbass of the Day!

copyright © 2016-2023 scmrak

DDIY - DOORS