Mitchell Dean

A door replacement could greatly update the look of your home. If you look into your local home store you will find a large selection of decorative doors that will improve the look of any home, door styles such as; French doors, iron doors, glass doors and wood doors all offer different benefits  and replacing an old door with a new door slab is a fairly easy process. The door slab is just the actual door and not the door jamb. You can often replace an old door with a pre-hung door installation but while doing so takes the precision work out of an installation it requires more construction than just replacing a door slab. The pre-hung door also will cost you more. It doesn’t matter if you are replacing a sliding glass door, or screen door, all follow relatively the same process. If you are considering the replacement of a garage door, you might want to consult a contractor.

About Pre-hung Doors

These types of doors come prepared from the factory to hang in a rough opening. This means that you don’t have to worry about installing hinges or other challenges that come along with hanging a door. These doors are hinged and come in a preassembled doorjamb that is braced to keep the jamb square during the shipping process. You should measure the existing wall surface to make sure that the new doorjamb will be flush with the existing surface. When you actually order the door, you can choose which side it will be hinged, which way it will swing and whether or not it will have factory drilled holes for the lockset. You can choose a smaller door, but you should check with the local building department to be sure that you will still conform to code and you can order a larger door, but be prepared to reframe the old door area.

Remove the Old Door

To begin installing the new door, you will need to remove the old door and the doorjamb. You will also need an assistant who can support the door while you remove the bottom hinge pin, than the middle and finally the top pin. Once this is done you will be able to safely remove the door and set it aside out of the way. The next step is to remove the trim covering the union on the wall and the doorjamb. You can remove the jamb by either prying the door away from the studs starting from the studs on the bottom and working your way up. The rough opening of the door will now be exposed and you will need to verify that the existing jamb is square, hinges are flush, lockset hole is properly drilled and all other features are correct.

Install the New Door

You should begin the installation by hanging the hinged side of the jamb by beginning on the bottom section. Once you mount the door you will have to check the doorjamb while making sure the jamb is square. Utilizing 10d-finishing nails, you will have to secure the lower part of the jamb, nailing the jambs and shims into the studs. You should let the nails protrude a bit and should not finish them until you have nailed each side of the door keeping it in place. Now you should check again to make sure that the jamb is square.

Now work on the top hinged section by repeating the same process and follow by nailing the middle and top hinges of the door. The final step begins by shimming, measuring and nailing the position between the bottom and middle points of the door, than shim the other side of the jamb nailing each section just as you did on the other side.

Finally remove the support material that was shipped and make a visual check to verify that the door is 1/16^th to 1/8^th of an inch from the jamb to the edge of the door. If anything looks uneven you should remove the nails from the problem location and adjust the section with the shims before nailing the area again and finally installing the lockset.