New Appreciation For Pre-Hung Doors

I'm in door mode right now in the kitchen and powder room. The powder room jamb I built and installed a while back, but never fully installed the door in the jamb. This created some problems during the install and not having the door in which left me with a little planing to do.



I picked up a neat tool - a Porter Cable hinge mortising kit for routering doors/jambs. It's fully adjustable to accept any size hinge and any thickness door and door height. So here is a shot setting it up on the jamb. There are little pins you hammer down to hold the jig in place. Then using a router with a guide, you router out the hinge mortise for each. Then remove the jig and square the corners, since I'm using orignal style hinges.



Next you take the jig and place on the door. There are adjustable ends with markings so you can account for the top and bottom clearances when placing the jig on the door. Then repeat the router sequence. The true test was mounting each half of the hinge to the door and jamb - and then pinning the door in place. Wouldn't you know it went right together! Is was a little pricy a tool even second hand - but when I have 15 or so doors to do from scratch, using salvage doors to boot, it was worth every penny.





So for the next door , the dishwasher closet, I built the jamb on saw horses around the door. But this time I mortised the door and jamb, making a complete unit. Then adding some cross bracing to keep things squared up I installed the complete unit into the opening with no problems. A few shims, nail in place, remove the bracing and call it done. Only things to add was the stop trim and mortise the strike plate for the lock.



The next door (basement) I'll go into a little more detail of how I made the jamb since my camera was dead when I did that part....