doors and architraves - probably a silly question

suered

Dear all
if the reclaimed doors you are lusting after are smaller than the "doorholes" in your house (up to 2 inches difference in both height/width, none of them seem to be the same size!), is it possible to compensate by installing "oversized" architrave - is there such a beast and if so, is it at all feasible? And if it IS feasible, any idea of rough cost or would it just look pants?

Many thanks

MickMack

for this to work you would have to fit smaller door frames (to suit the size of the actual doors.

to fit smaller frames to a larger opening you'll have to fill the space with something to pack it out to the frame size for fixing

then as you say you will need a wider architrave to cover the gap between the existing wall and the frame, so you will end up with smaller doors and oversize architrave which may look very strange!!

suered

Ah - i was forgetting that frames and architraves are different beasties. So if you put in new bulkier frames to make the actual hole smaller, could you then cut down the existing architrave to fit the new size frame and doors? Or is this the sort of thing that you should only consider if you have a bottomless budget due to the potential for things going wrong?

thanks

MickMack

one of the main purposes of architrave it to cover the joint between the wall and the frame in a decorative way

a heavier frame would allow you to correctly install the smaller door within the wall opening you have which is quite a bit larger.

however this doesn't really help the architrave situation as it still needs to be big enough to cover the joint with the wall opening

its possible to do but it would be hard to say how it might look in the end, only you can decide if its pleasing to your eyes

suered

Thanks again MickMack - I think I will just have to keep looking for bigger doors.

MickMack

or a smaller house......

suered

MickMack wrote: »

or a smaller house......

*sigh* the downside of not having a modern identikit - although having EVERY door a different size, even if only slightly, is beginning to wind me up just a bit........

Happy-Days_3

suered wrote: »

*sigh* the downside of not having a modern identikit - although having EVERY door a different size, even if only slightly, is beginning to wind me up just a bit........

Know the feeling! We bought a place to do up. Walked round it and passing thought of chuck old doors in bin, buy new ones. Came to measure up later and realised oh crap, 6 doors, 6 different sizes, and despite searching hundreds, just couldn't get any to fit. In the end, had to take then all of, sand em down and paint them up. They look ok, but not as good as new doors would have. And it took me several days, and still not done painting! Rant over....

If you got the cash, other option is custom made doors...

societys_child

Hope this makes sense.
I needed to make a couple of 32inch "door holes" narrower. (reduced to 28")

Removed the architrave from one side and top, then fastened a new piece of frame into one side of the original frame (used noggins between the old and new frame piece, to position it accurately, ensuring there was also space in both rooms to fasten a strip of plasterboard to the noggins )
Plaster skimmed the strips of plasterboard to match the existing walls, re-fitted the architrave to the new piece of frame then cut the top piece to size and re-fitted that.

A bit more work involved if you need to reduce the height as well, but same principal.