- 06
- Feb
I finally got the hallway around the bedroom, at the top of the steps, and down the steps painted. The color is sorta of a dark cream color even if all the pictures you see on this site make it look yellow.
After painting the hallway, I decided to go out and buy 3 new prehung doors for the bedrooms. Notice how I said after? I do everything backwards. It’s a rule. Paint the wall then scuff it up. Of course. If I didn’t do this, each tiny part of the project wouldn’t follow the twice rule. For those of you that don’t know me well enough, the twice rule pretty much states that not matter what you do in life, 9 times out of 10 you’re going to have to do it over at least once. I can’t explain it. It’s just how the world works today.
Anyway, the doors. First, below are the old doors. One look at these pictures should explain to you why I replaced them. If it doesn’t, go outside and stand in naked in the cold for a few minutes, come back in, and look at them again.
I decided to get prehung doors to replace the exist doors, frames and all. Of course this wasn’t going to work. In a perfect world, or normal I should say, walls are either around 4 and 1/2 inches wide or in somewhat more rare cases, around 6 and 1/2 depending on what type of wood is used to frame the wall originally. 2×4 + 1/2 on each side is around 4.5, 2×6 + 1/2 on each side is around 6.5. (2×4s and 2×6s are actually around 1/2 less than their advertised width. Why you ask? I say instead of asking, just say of course they are. Why on fucking earth would it make sense?)
Now, this makes putting a pre-hung door a pretty simple task, however, my walls were neither of these “standard” measurements. Were they at least close? Not really. 5 Inches. 5. Fucking 5. for some reason, and I’m going to have to go with “that was how they did things then” since it seems to be the standard answer I get from people that know what they’re doing in remodeling / construction, my walls are built with 2 3/8″ laminated pieces of wall (1 drywall, 1 plaster). This makes them 3/4″ thick adding to a total of 5. 2×4+1.5. Well, I wanted the doors so I found some 1/2 x 3/4 moulding at the Home Damn Depot and got an idea. I extended the jambs with it but cutting and nailing a piece to each edge of the frame. I found out after that some store on this earth sells prehung doors with ajustable width door jambs. Too bad it’s not anywhere that is visible to humans. Why would it be? After nailing, I used some Dry Dex spakle (I love this stuff) to fill in the line where the pieces of wood meet the jamb and all the nail holes. After a few passes with spakle and sanding, you can barely see the line. Once it’s painted, it’ll be gone entirely. You can kinda see my extensions in this picture:
Oh, and of course there was yet another hitch. One of the doors was a little more than 5 inches thick. Luckily I found some 11/16″ moulding that worked pretty well. The wall is completely uneven so I’m going to have to somehow shave it down where the trim will mount. Also, the guy that built the frame was doing peyote or something. Had to create a HUGE gap to get it to mount straight. Some plaster repair is in order here too.
Below are the almost finished doors. They still need painted of course and the casing wood needs to be put up.
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