Here's a couple of pics of that door that took me 8 hours to hang.

[LuckyCharms]

For the first time, this one came out almost perfect. I lucked out on the casing...most of the pieces I got have stunning wood grains. 2 doors down, 8 to go. My goal is to reduce my time from 8 hours to 7 hours and 55 minutes.

[Kurt V.]

1. Love that grain.

[Phentex]

2. It looks like it's a millimeter off to me...

-------------------------------------------

[defacto7]

3. That's a beautiful door! My question is...

What could be on the other side? That is a mystery.

[pangaia]

15. Nothing. He just hung them all over the house for the artistic peace of mind....

[defacto7]

29. Ah, like sheng fui...

[pangaia]

43. yup....:)))

[LuckyCharms]

25. It's a room where I store all of my doors.

[defacto7]

30. ha...

[RKP5637]

4. Very nice!!!

[PJMcK]

5. Does it open?

(wink)

It’s a beautiful door. Great job.

What’s your next trick gonna be?

[Nitram]

6. Great job!

Looks exactly like the door I sanded, stained, and hung for the closet in our entryway. Exactly! It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I had to do some serious planing to make its fit right.We chose a glass knob because I loved the one's in my grandmother's house.

[LuckyCharms]

26. The door I replaced there had a glass knob on a hollow birch door.

I saved it...going to use it elsewhere.

[angstlessk]

7. Looks like 8 hours well spent

It's done, and will never have to be done again

[hermetic]

8. So lovely!

Good job.

[FuzzyRabbit]

22. Is that cat ever going to pounce?

I've been watching it for 20 minutes.

[Honeycombe8]

9. Beautiful door. nt

[Ohiogal]

10. Looks great, Lucky!

That’s no easy feat.

[Leith]

11. Wow - it looks terrific!

You can be proud of a job well done.

[Mars and Minerva]

12. Nice door and nice work.

My contractor says that you can judge someone's skills by their ability to hang a door perfectly.

It appears that you have some skills.

[Shrike47]

13. Yep, that's a door alright.

Actually, it’s pretty nice.

[Sneederbunk]

14. 8 hours?

[PatrickforO]

17. Oh, it's MUCH harder than it looks to hang a door.

Unless you've been a carpenter and have been taught to do it and had plenty of practice.

For someone like me, I'd probably take longer than the eight hours Lucky Charms took.

[LuckyCharms]

19. Removed old door and casing and jamb...

Cut it up into small pieces so I could put it in a garbage bag.

Prehung unit was too tall for rough opening, so I had to cut both jambs, then had to cut right jamb to account for unlevel floor side to side. Luckily had enough clearance at bottom of door so I didn't have to cut door also. Had to get the jamb unit into my miter saw as one unit by myself without it coming apart.

Bad crossleg in wall left vs. right so had to average that out.

Had to sand 60 year old paint line off wall because new casing would not cover it up. Had to patch and repaint casing area before installing new.

Door itself weighed over 100 pounds, solid oak.

Every screw I drove into the jamb managed to hit something that stopped it from driving all of the way in.

EZ door hanging clips would not work because of the way the wall was finished. Had no shims, so had to go buy some and do it old school. Also had to buy a new nail gun and figure out how to use it (needed a heavier gauge, nails kept blowing out).

Cut myself and bled all over the raw materials. Had to clean that up.

Had to shop vac my whole garage to get rid of the saw dust thrown from the miter saw. Walls and ceiling too. Had to chisel out strike plate.

8 hours.

[cstanleytech]

31. Probably would have taken me 2 days and the loss of a limb. nt

[Ellipsis]

36. Fine work! Good job on the miters.

I would have lost it about six hours in... and broke out the persuader. Patience and tenacity are the traits of a craftsman.

[tclambert]

20. There must be youtube videos that would help out.

I've seen a professional hang a door in minutes. He used lots of shims, checked his level often, and he had a cool trick using a flat pry bar as a lever with a hammer for the fulcrum so he could lift the door with foot pressure while he had both hands free to position and drive in screws. A second person can help out, too.

Beautiful door. Love the wood grain.

[PatrickforO]

16. Well done! I've never been able to hang a door.

That is HARD. And yours looks pretty darned straight to me.

[LuckyCharms]

23. I went to trade school when I was in my teens.

I could hang a door fairly easily (soft pine jambs and light hollow doors), and that included doing the hinge mortises with a hammer and chisel.

Then I decided to go to college instead of going to work as a contractor and I totally lost my skills.

Now 40 years later, I can hang a door, but it takes me a long time. You are right, they are very difficult.

I've had master carpenters tell me how they hang a door, and a lot of them do it wrong. If they have a floor that is not level side to side, they just slap a pre-hung unit in there, and scribe the bottom of the door to the floor so the bottom gap looks even. That is not the correct way. The TOP of the door needs to be level when installing it. If the top is not level...it is useless. Everything else becomes a mess. The only way to get the top level is to shim up one side of the jamb, or, if the door sets on a finished floor (vs. carpeting that will hide the shim), cut the jamb that is on the high side and then set the unit in the opening. Also, another potential problem is "cross leg". That happens when the wall on the right is not parallel to the wall on the left, or, if your walls are not straight up and down. That means that the top or bottom of the door will not be flush with the jamb. However, since you have to keep the edge of the jamb even with the wall so the casing fits correctly and with no gap, you kind of have to "average out" that error by moving the jamb to where it minimizes the appearance of cross leg while still allowing the casing to fit with no gaps.

A carpenter once told me that you have to hang around 100 doors by yourself before you get any good at it.

[sprinkleeninow]

18. WHOA! Outstanding! Rich wood finish. Ya done your place proud! 👍

[extvbroadcaster]

21. Harder than you think

I did my side entry door to my garage. Just the door, so I had to do the frame and everything. It took a whole weekend. Even then it is just a little off and it drives me nuts. I doubt anybody else would ever notice. I agree, if you are a carpenter with experience probably a few hours. But I bought the door only used. I now know why people buy pre hung doors! Good job. Looks nice.

[LuckyCharms]

24. Thank you...and that's the thing...

Nobody notices your mistakes but you. That's what I keep telling myself. I agonize forever over my mistakes, but no one sees them!

I'm replacing all of the doors in my house that were hung by a pro in the 1990's. The old doors all look like crap. Open gaps at the casing miters, uneven reveals, etc.

I bet your door looks great, so don't worry about the mistakes only you see!

[FuzzyRabbit]

27. Nice job! It looks beautiful.

Did I count only 3 extra trips to the hardware store? That project would have taken me at least 5 trips. Or 6. Or 7. Then I would call my nephew (a handyman) to come over and redo it correctly.

[LuckyCharms]

32. You know what I do now?

I used to waste hours and hours making multiple trips to the store.

Now what I do is this:

1) Go to the locally owned hardware store because they always have someone there to help, so I don't waste time walking around looking confused.

2) If I know that the local won't have what I need, I go online to Home Depot, order what I need, continue working, wait for a text from Home Depot telling me my order is ready, drive 1.5 miles to HD, park right in front of the store, run into the customer service desk, get my order and outta there in 3 minutes!

[MontanaMama]

37. You got that right.

I’ll always go to the local hardware store first. Lowe’s or HD as a last resort. Your door is gorgeous. Well done.

[ZeroSomeBrains]

28. Very beautiful

Well done!

[Capperdan]

33. Good Job,

This is my 35th year in the door business. Have to compliment a good carpenter. Red oak used to be more popular, but it's making a comeback. Nice grain and I like the clear coating too.

[LuckyCharms]

41. I have mostly oak in the house but...

you can see my kitchen in one of the pictures. I refaced all of that in hard maple. The dark brown finished maple goes well with the oak on the door and window trim, and baseboards.

[Phoenix61]

34. Beautiful!

I bought a 1948 house that has solid wood doors which I really like. However, they had very old lock sets that were mostly broken. If the holes had been round it would have been easy but they weren't, they were rectangular and went to the edge of the door. I had a friend cut plugs from a spare door. Plugged the old hole in the door and used a lock set kit to cut the holes for a new, modern lock set. I've done 6 and have 2 more left to do.

[LuckyCharms]

40. That's the beauty of solid doors vs. hollow...

Doing things like that are sometimes impossible on a hollow door. I'm glad you came up with a solution for your locksets! I bet they look great.

[oasis]

35. Simply adoorable!

[CaptainTruth]

38. As a professional contractor who has installed hundreds of doors...

... & who LOVES natural wood ... it looks GREAT!

I have comments & questions, but they will have to wait.

I have to be on the jobsite early tomorrow morning.

Great job!

[LuckyCharms]

39. I would welcome any tips that you have!

Here's the problem that I had...

I was curious about how those "EZ door hanging clips" work. Instead of using shims, you attach these clips to each side of the jamb. Then you draw a plumb line about 1/2 inch in on the wall on the hinge side, and screw the top clip in using that line as a reference. The hole in the clip is oblong, so you can adjust it by siding back and forth horizontally. Once you have the top clip screwed in, you move down to the middle clip and screw that clip in at the same location as the top one, and so on. By the time you reach the bottom clip, your hinge side is plumb as referenced by your vertical line that you drew. Then you put the door on its hinges, and adjust the 3 clips on the latch side by eyeballing the door gap.

In theory, it seems like this system would work well. However, my walls are the old style rock lath. The door in the picture is to a coat closet, and the wall that is perpendicular to the was that the casing is on (behind the jamb), was finished with rock lath all the way up to the front of the jack stud. So whenever I tried to screw a clip into the wall, I was screwing into the edge of some rock lath, instead of the stud. This was no good, so I ended up using the normal method with shims.

The door to the right of the one in the picture is a bathroom, which will take the same door. To the right of that is a bedroom, also taking the same door. I'm going to try those clips again, because on those two doors, I won't have a perpendicular wall in the back, so they should bite right into a stud. Those two doors will be problematic though, because I will have to notch out some existing bathroom floor tile (about 1/8 inch) to get the jambs to sit flush on the hardwood floor in the hallway before the bathroom. Same problem with the bedroom, only I will have to notch out some carpet. Reason being...even though there are old doors in there now, the inside jamb to inside jamb measurement on the new doors is about 1/8 inch narrower than the old doors. I don't know if I'm explaining this well...

[fierywoman]

42. It's a thing of beauty: bravo!