Widening a Door, a Dummies' Dangerous Method

Door framing details

Our staffers maintain a special file for freelance posts that go beyond monumentally stupid to dangerously stupid. We dug into that file today to feature a post written by a freelancer who is so far out of her "comfort zone" that she's coming into it from the opposite side. We ran across J. Lang Wood just this week, but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to award her the DotD in a second category – this time it's for a Hunker.com article titled, "How to Make a Door Frame Wider."

Interestingly enough, one staffer considered this same project last year but gave it up on the basis of its complexity (and messiness). Lang, on the other hand, seems to think it's pretty straightforward:

"Widening a door requires some planning and consideration¹ of the practical requirements of both rooms connected by the door. To make a door frame wider, the do-it-yourself should also ensure that the planned construction does not cut into any existing electrical or heating and air conditioning equipment."

We'll grant her that point: you need to check the wiring and HVAC lines before attacking the project. Plumbing, too, for that matter. Unfortunately, that's where J. Lang's instructions stop being useful: they're useless because Wood knows jack about framing and, for that matter, about doors. Here's why we say that:

• "Step 3: Remove the wood frame pieces and the threshold." – Wood doesn't even know the word "jamb."
• "Step 6: Begin cutting the wall at the top of the door frame... Avoid cutting into the wood top plate above the door. Cut across the drywall to the desired width, and cut down to the floor following the line drawn on the drywall." – Ummm, J. Lang? What about the king and jack studs?

• "Step 7: Measure the inside of the new edge, and cut a 2-by-4-inch piece of lumber to this length." – Wait for it...
• "Step 8 Set this vertical length into place on the edge. Level the wood, and nail it into place on the vertical wall framing on the side you just opened using 2 1/2-inch nails. Add wood shims if necessary to connect to the wood frame." – Dear Lord, does this cretin have the slightest idea what the framing looks like? Or what shims are? Or what you use shims for?
• "Step 9: Cut two 2-by-4-inch boards to a height that will extend to the bottom of the header, and nail these into place with 2 1/2-inch nails onto the top plate wood, locating one piece on each side of the doorway." – But wait: she didn't extend the header to the full width! How's that gonna work?
• "Step 10: Cut the horizontal header to fit across the top of the door. Level this piece, and nail it into place with 2 1/2-inch nails against the two vertical pieces you just installed. Add wood shims to fit along the wood top plate to stabilize it, if necessary." – ...and she wants you to all this inside the drywall. Oh, yeah, and again with the shims!

There's more where that came from, but we're pretty sure that what's already here is more than enough to prove that J. Lang Wood not only has no idea how to widen a door frame, she has no idea how to install a door. Not only that, but this idiot's failure to properly extend the header would be dangerously stupid if the door is on a bearing wall. Dumbass of the Day? Hell, yes: Dumbass of the Year!

¹ The random use here of the word "consideration" is a dead giveaway that this garbage was written for eHow...

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