DiY help – planing and re-hanging a door

I am DiY incompentent, lets put that out there to start. I have in the past, struggle to hang a picture…
The door on my office won’t close since we had a new, thicker carpet fitted. This means that said spare room is bloody freezing and I sit here working whilst wearing a gilet and a hat. Not a good look on Teams calls.
So, I need to take the door off, plane a few MM off the bottom and rehang it. I can get hold of a plane and other required tools. Normally this would be a call to me Dad to sort, but realistically I don’t want him round at the moment.
So, how easy is this, and more to the point, what’s the worse thing that I can mess up?
Thanks all.

It’s pretty easy to do but be careful when planing at the edge of the frame as the wood may splinter.

Ideally you should have the following:
– Plane
– Workbench to hold the door frame
– Suitable screwdriver

When you come to rehang the door you will find it easier if you can put something under the door to act as a lever to lift it into the correct position. I usually just use a screwdriver on top of a hammer handle but you can get proper tools like this:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Don’t take too much off straight away – you can always take the door off again to plane a bit more off if it is still sticking.

It’s a pretty simple job if you go steady. As it is off the bottom you won’t be able to hold the door nicely, you’ll be working at an angle. The plane needs to be sharp to stop it tearing on the end grain and don’t take too much at once. You also need to keep it square, again easier if you take smaller bites. That said I wouldn’t use a plane at all. Another job where the track saw wins. Worse thing, barring some random injury, would be taking too big a slice if the plane digs in or maybe the end grain spitting at the corner. Easily fixed if it is painted, probably live-able with if it is bare wood.

Is it a solid wood door, or a “composite” where a frame holds a bit of cardboard in between two bits of plywood? if the latter be careful how much you take off as you’ll only have maybe an inch of wood in the frame. I had this, had to split he door, move the frame then reglue everything

One thing I did was knock up a couple of helpers to hold the door. Tke a couple of pieces of 2*4 timber, maybe 12 to 18″ lond. Standing the pieces on the long, thin side, cut a square out of the middle so the bottom is continuous, but the door can drop in, then use wedges to hld the door in place – like this

Is it a solid wood door, or a “composite” where a frame holds a bit of cardboard in between two bits of plywood?

I was going to ask the same but I thought the better of it – surely there will only be a few MM being taken off if it to allow for a new carpet and it will get nowhere near the hollow internals of a cheap interior door (if that is what it is).

Fair point, but we don’t know how much has already been taken off

Just a tip from a fellow DIY incompetent speaking from experience
If you have to buy a brand new plane it will probably require to be honed to the correct blade angle/sharpness. You may not have the kit or expertise to do this yourself. The outer packaging may not tell you about this.

Shave the carpet?

Nobody has mentioned the hinges yet.

Check first to see if they have loose pins or one piece, the former can be tapped out with a punch whilst the latter require to be completely unscrewed.

How are you going to work out how much to take off? Probably by taking the door off and propping it up in its place and seeing how much higher the hinge recess on the door is than the one on the frame and going from there.
I wouldn’t plane it, I’d use a saw. Preferably a circular saw.
It usually doesn’t matter if there’s none of the solid bottom left. I’ve seen a few doors like that and you can’t tell until you take it off, or somebody kicks it hard.

I’ve used a circular saw to do a few of ours. Top tip: just before you start doing anything permanent, check things like which way the handle turns to make sure you’re taking the required amount off the bottom, not the top…

Time to buy a Festool Track Saw and join the STW club 🙂

If yiure near wirralshire or chester i can help,

always remember which is the bottom of the door before planing , seen peeps planing top of door by mistake.

Top tip: just before you start doing anything permanent, check things like which way the handle turns to make sure you’re taking the required amount off the bottom, not the top…

Thats the voice of experience i reckon

All of the above is good advice. Only things I can add are:-
Lifting the door back in – I have a couple of wooden home made wedges to lift it to the correct height for the hinges.
Draw a line on the door where you want to cut/plane too. that way you can check you aren’t taking too much off……and it’s straight!
Plane or saw? That depends how much has to come off, if you are talking about enough that the blade won’t “break out” then saw. Carpet + underlay probably means you could get away with the saw.

Shave the carpet?

This is obviously the correct answer.
Get a knife out of the kitchen drawer and cut out the section of carpet that’s under the door.
Extra points if you tape a marker pen to the edge of the door to mark the carpet where to cut – don’t want it to look like an amateur job!

Get a chippie in its a ten minute job .. 0r
Remove door via pins if on hinges , unscrew 3 screws per hinge , let one out of middle hinge , last one from bottom hinge , move door from frame and sit corner on floor , no need for chisels or screwdrivers to prop up ( just damage a wood floor anyway) , remove top screw door now loose .. you can measure from bottom of bottom hinge to your carpet and add on say another 5 mm to that size ( thats how much you need cut off door ) via a planer or circular saw , if door pre finished , mark one face with a knife along cut line , cut the opposite face with your circular saw and rub cut edges with plane or sandpaper .. now fit door back to posts by fitting top hinge first , let bottom corner rest on floor tap door to suit top hinge hole , fit one screw and go to bottom hinge and move out until holes align with himge and post , enter screw , check door if fine screw up rest of hinges , job done

Unfortunately trying to get a chippie out to do a ten minute job would be an impossibility if its anything like where I live. Trades people are in such demand they are picking and choosing jobs and something like this just isn’t meaty enough…and if it is the quote would be ridiculous for what it is.

It’s a job easily possible to be done by a DIY incompetent. The way I do it (maybe its probably not THE BEST way to do it but it works for me) is summarised below and is how my joiner Grandad did it.

Get on your hands and knees and try to gauge how much material you need to remove. This isn’t rocket science and sub-mm precision is not required – mark on the door just above the top of the carpet pile and when the door is off draw a line as a guide. If you remove a couple of mm’s too much then you’re not going to die.

On hinges – remove the hinges from the frame end. Be careful and use a properly fitting screwdriver. Sometimes hinges come with really crappy quality screws so can easily to slip your screwdriver and strip the screw head if you don’t use the correct size and type of screwdriver – more of an issue with cross-headed screws of course. This could be a good opportunity to replace the screws if they are of crap quality or if they’ve already been removed and refitted several times and the screw head is worn. Stripping a screw head on removal or part way through re-fitting would be a PITA.

I hold the door on its long edge between my knees…easier to plane vertically down rather than with the door on its side trying to plane horizontally. Maybe prop the end up so the door so is at a comfortable angle for planing rather than a properly vertical edge….or whatever is comfy for you and going to help you plane a nice straight edge.

The important bit is to plane from two directions from the bottom outside edge of the door into the middle. then turn the door around and do the same. This prevents pushing the plane out to the edge of the door and splitting the edge of the door.

Planes are tricky to use and so easy to take off too much so don’t be greedy, set the plane blade depth conservatively and don’t try to take too much off at once, let the plane do the work and don’t press on heavily and concentrate on the angle of the plane relative to the door edge. You’re planing vertically down so let gravity do the work and focus on directing the plane rather than pushing it. The plane action should be a nice smooth stroke at a constant speed to plane off from the door edge to the middle. Take a few strokes, turn the door and take another couple, turn again and so on. Keep an eye on keeping the edge as straight as possible with your pencil line…the tendency is that you take off more at the edge and taper as you go to the middle creating a v-shape, or the opposite and press on more as you move to the middle and create a valley.

Once you’ve taken off the amount you think you need then test fit the door in the frame. Often if the hinges are a tight fit into the relieve in the door frame you don’t need to screw the hinges back in, you can just push the hinges into the relieve and support the door and see if the door is still dragging on the carpet.

You can use a circular saw I guess, but could have the job done and dusted by the time you’ve set up the circular saw and straight edge, and just shaving off a few mm with a circular saw can be tricky. If you’re fitting doing several doors from scratch where you’re often removing 5 – 10mm or so of material then it might be worth it but for shaving off a few mm off each door much easier and quicker to use a plane. With some care and attention even the most ‘incompetent’ DIY’er can do this job with a plane. I’m talking from experience.

If the hinge screws have been removed several times then the fitting of the screw in the door frame hole might have become a bit slack over time. Then if this is the case then a top tip is to take a match stick, snap off the fire-ry end, gently hammer in the match into the hole, snap off the excess and screw into the hole that has been stuffed with the match. You get a nice snug fit of the screw into the frame again.

You can use a circular saw I guess, but could have the job done and dusted by the time you’ve set up the circular saw and straight edge, and just shaving off a few mm with a circular saw can be tricky.

Sir needs a track saw in his life.

However totally agree a plane is more than adequate.

Just don’t use a jigsaw! (DAMHIKT)

This plane you can get hold of – is it electric or ‘acoustic’ ? Much more scope for making a pig’s ear of it with an electric one.

A track saw would make short work of it.

Much more scope for making a pig’s ear of it with an electric one.

Also much more scope for distributing tiny wood shavings EVERYWHERE with an electric plane; if the amount you need to remove isn’t enough for a circular saw of some sort I would use a manual plane.

The guys currently fitting my new front door frame are using these things:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/winbag-inflatable-air-wedge-160mm-x-160mm/1363K?tc=LA5&ds_kid=92700055262507126&ds_rl=1244066&gclid=Cj0KCQiArvX_BRCyARIsAKsnTxPrt4O1m5dh-8DLh7ofU1yg2otKF-15VHqTZMSRfrny3514ESFuSEsaAjeXEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Not suggesting you need them, a screwdriver over a hammer lever is enough in this case, but I wish I had known about these things sooner!