Hello,
I have a 7 year old house with all prehung, solid, masonite doors. One of the doors is about 1/4″ to narrow and there is a sliver of an opening between the edge of the door and the door stop. Is there any good way of adjusting this? I was wondering if a double thick door stop might be available for me to purchase or maybe I could make one. Do you think this would be a good solution?
Thanks, Eric
Replies
Eric,
Sure, you could use a wider stop, but a more elegant approach would be to widen the door so it fits properly in its opening. If it is the latch side that has the wide gap, you might get rid of the gap enough to live with by simply shimming the hinges with some cardboard. 1/4" is a lot to correct, and I'd need to see it to truly advise you, but starting with hinge shimming is easy and free, so a good place to begin.
Bill
Yeah, first thing to look at is whether you can add a little space on the hinge side.
After that, yes, you can increase the thickness of the stop, within reason. Depends on the style of the door frame, your skill/cleverness, and how much of a hack appearance you're willing to put up with -- in the right situation it could look fine, in other cases pretty ugly.
Do keep in mind that if you put in a thicker doorstop you'll still have problems with the gap between latch and strike.
Another option would be to narrow the door frame.
We hung a houseful of those same doors. At the 1 year punch almost all had that problem. GC had us add some screen lathe to the latch stop. All the latches still caught. Never did figure out why... Incredible Shrinking Masonite?
I went down to the lobby
To make a small call out.
A pretty dancing girl was there,
And she began to shout,
"Go on back to see the gypsy.
He can move you from the rear,
Drive you from your fear,
Bring you through the mirror.
He did it in Las Vegas,
And he can do it here."
Be careful about a double thick door stop on the latch side. In a lot of cases it could make you scrape your hand when opening the door.
http://amconservationgroup.com/store/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=191
I've had luck with these before and they are low profile but if the gap is that bad you will have to shim the hinges or redo the header and threshold.
Where there's a will, there are 500 relatives
depending on how much it bugs you, you can remove and replace the casing and door frame .. no cost .. just time ..
doubling the stop would be a last choice for me. it would look worst and would likely account for scraping lots of skin off knuckles and thumbs. That door would get the nickname, "The Four letter door"
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