Hope you all had a great Labor Day. We split the day between family time and tackling some house projects, which is honestly our ideal mix. This week is shaping up to be busy with book-related commitments nearly every day, but we managed to finish a few things to share here. We hope to be back to our usual routine next week, although we might be a bit slower responding to comments until then.
Back to the doors. Or should I say jambs? The casings aren’t installed yet, we’ll be upgrading the leftover doorknobs to the backplated style we prefer, and one door still needs a full paint job—but it already feels great to have two doors hung along this side of the hallway. Since many of you asked for step-by-step details, here’s how we built the jambs and hung both doors, including how we routed space for hinges and a doorknob.
Before last week the laundry room had no door, which made working in there easier but left the storage room awkwardly closed off with a plastic drop cloth. That look was functional but not attractive or convenient.
Hanging these doors gave me a whole new appreciation for how much goes into a seemingly simple door. Between the hardware—hinges, knob, strike plate—and the three-piece trim that forms a doorway, it’s a more involved process than it appears.
We considered buying a pre-hung door for the laundry room, which would have saved us from cutting hinge and latch mortises, but it was hard to find a pre-hung that matched the style we wanted for the storage-room door and the slab (non-pre-hung) version was a much better price. Plus, the laundry-room door was an existing door we intended to reuse, so we would have had to build a jamb for it anyway. We decided to make a jamb for the reused door first and, if that went well, build and hang the other door from the jamb kit as well.
We bought a $19 jamb kit designed for doors up to 36″ wide; our doors are 32″. The kit comes in three pre-cut pieces—two sides and a top—and the side pieces already have a rabbet cut so the top fits neatly across them. Ours needed a slight trim to fit the framed opening, so I was careful to trim the non-rabbeted end only.
To assemble, we propped the door on scrap wood so I could work with gravity on my side. I positioned the side pieces and trimmed the top piece to the proper length, accounting for the rabbet and leaving about an 1/8″ clearance around the door for smooth operation.
Next came cutting the hinge mortises in the jamb so the hinges would sit flush. Because the hinges were already attached to the door, I used their placement to mark the jamb, then traced a spare hinge outline as a guide for routing.
I bought a compact router and a dedicated bit for this type of work. After practicing on scrap wood and refining my freehand approach by clamping a guide, I got much cleaner, consistent cuts. The first official cut on the jamb turned out great, and once both hinge spots were routed I nailed the jamb pieces together using 2″ nails through the side pieces into the top.
We set the assembled jamb loosely into the framed opening and focused on getting it level and plumb. With shims—especially under the hinge locations—to fine tune alignment, we nailed the jamb into place on all sides. Thanks to shims under the door, I was able to attach the hinge screws and test the fit. At first the door was a little tight in the top corner, but adding a couple more shims corrected the plumb and everything closed nicely. After that I installed the strike plate and nailed the stop molding around the jamb.
It wasn’t a fast job, but I was very pleased with the result.
Later, after finishing the backsplash and counter work, it was time to hang the other door. This one was heavier and lacked hinges, so I had to route mortises on both the door and the jamb and used three hinges for extra support. Instead of clamping scrap guides repeatedly, I made a template from my practice board, marked hinge locations with a jigsaw, and used that guide while routing. That made the mortises quick and consistent.
With the door mortises complete, I propped the door in place, held the jamb loosely, and transferred hinge positions to the side jamb. I added shims at the top to avoid a tight fit again, routed the hinge spots on the jamb using my template, nailed the jamb pieces together, and set everything in the frame. This time, with Sherry’s help, the door went up much faster and worked perfectly—high fives and a bit of celebratory dancing followed.
The door still needed a knob, so I used a $19 door-handling kit to drill the holes accurately. The jig clips onto the door, using the strike plate as a reference, and comes with the correct size drill bits. You drill the main cross-bore for the knob, then the smaller bore for the latch. I did need to route a small recess on the door edge for the latch to sit flush, which I did freehand with my router; it wasn’t perfect but will be smoothed with wood putty or caulk before priming and painting.
The final result is a securely hung door that stays open when desired, closes firmly, and looks good even before paint. Because the hardwood floor didn’t extend all the way to the door, we added two small hardwood pieces to create a horizontal threshold. It looks nice and should work with future storage-room flooring. I do wish I had extended the wood an inch further into the laundry room to hide the tile edge, but minor misalignments like that are common and often go unnoticed.
We’ll spray-paint all the molding, add casings when we finish the room, and swap in matching decorative back-plated knobs so the hallway has a cohesive look. For now, being able to close the laundry room door has made a huge difference—laundry is much quieter and we no longer have to wrestle the plastic drop cloth every time we access the storage room. Life is better without the drop cloth.
It’s exciting to see this little addition nearly complete. On one hand it feels like it’s taken a while, but on the other it’s remarkable that this space wasn’t even drywalled a month ago. Compared to past renovations that took months, this progress feels speedy. In the spirit of Dory: just keep swimming.