Replacing timber front door, frame and toplight like for like

[Mart]

Hi all,

Out front door is warped and draughty and my other half would also like some additional glazing so i'm investigating a)replacing front door with new hardwood door or b) replacing front door, entire frame including toplight and cill with new hardwood

Replacing entire frame and all components would be quite an undertaking and probably quite disruptive, however i'm not sure how disruptive. Would the frame be considered structural and i'd need to use props? I believe the arched vestibule would be holding up the majority of the weight of the property.

Replacing just the front door (and perhaps a matching toplight) would be my preference: much less intrusive, cheaper and keeps more original features. However the frame is fairly butchered and I don't believe is completely square so fitting new door would likely be frustrating and not improve draught situation

What would you do in my position? replace door or go all in?

 

[Itchinfilth]

Looks to be some lovely carved detail on that door. It would be a shame to replace.

 

[Mart]

It is a lovely door, I put some good time into repainting and sorting out the furniture. However its sadly badly warped at the bottom now to the point it barely goes in to the frame and the lock can't be used.

 

[Cubist]

A couple of quick points;

• Door frames/casements are not structural components per se. They provide no direct support to the walls beside or above them.
• Typically a lintel of some kind is located above the casement and it is this that carries the bearing weight of masonry of the wall above and and timbers used to support the ceilings and floors above.
• It's unusual to find a that a casement has warped. These are usually constructed in composite form using standard timber and mouldings.
  • However, its not unknown for 'adjustments' to have been made to the casement to accommodate other movement either of the door installed in it or even the walls.

How badly warped do you believe/know the door to be?

In your shoes, and given the obvious time and effort already invested in restoring the door I would be going serious consideration as to how I may be able to modify the door frame to meet the door rather than scrapping everything. Do you have or can you provide us with more details and perhaps some pictures of the problems exhibited by the casement and measures of where the door is fitting properly and tightly?

 

[Mart]

Thanks Cubist I'll take you up on the offer. I'm not one to throw away and I do like to mend where possible, thanks to this forum I've managed to fix and draught proof all my sash windows.

Having said that I do think this doors days are numbered - it does appear to be badly warped ~2.5cm out of frame at the bottom - and Mrs Mart is keen to get a glazed door to get more light in the hallway regardless.

So the problems I can see.

1) The door has dropped, I've previously shimmed the lower hinges to attempt to offset this drop. I'm not sure if this is down to the frame being out of plumb - see photos below of door being lower and hinge jamb leaning slightly in. I don't think the frame is really to blame here and it's more the door.


2) Door appears to be warped, turning in on the latch side bottom - it's about 2.5cm out of the frame at the bottom whilst being flush with frame at the top. The lower security bolt is not longer possible to close. There photos are with the door shut excluding photo with level.



3) At some point the frame appears to have been modified to accommodate the warped door. 4.5cm room for door at the top, 2cm at the bottom. I've resolved the majority of the draughts with the draught strips i've added but the whole door is springy at the bottom when shut.


I think my preference is to find and fit a new door (can warped doors even be fixed?) it's a standard 838mmx1981mm door so a replacement should be easy as long as the frame is compliant.

 

[Cubist]

With that amount of drop at the doors head I would have expected it to quite literally be hanging off its top hinge by a thread and be jammed solidly against the cill. I'm therefore thinking that the door was replaced sometime in the past and perhaps poorly fitted and/or prepared for installation. The long jambs on either side and the base and header boards are intended to provide its structural strength but, as the bulk of the doors body is made up of decorative carved panels, these lend little strength and should one of the jambs warp or twist theres little to resist such movement. What's odd though is that the photo of your level against the doors face suggests it is not far off being reasonably straight. A question; are your neighbours doors similarly carved like yours?

It's sad but I think you're right, a new door may be your best, and least expensive, option. It is possible to straighten a door but it would be prohibitively expensive and frankly I would doubt that the chance of a recurrence of the warp could be completely eliminated. You would be wise though, before buying the new door, to verify that the casement is capable of being made true in terms of both plumb and square at all relevant points. Hopefully it will only require a few tweaks.

 

[Mart]

It really is a puzzle. The door is solid, top hinge is slightly recessed in the jamb and bottom hinge is slightly proud to offset some of the drop.

I agree that the door has probably been replaced. All the houses around here are fairly unique however there is a "sister house" a small way up the road which we think may have been built at the same time (after 1912) and it had an identical door (also replaced now) which would suggest they are either both original or both replaced at the same time - a mystery!

Are there any best practice ways to validate that casement is plumb and square and would take a new door? so far I've measured at varying places and used the level but its hard to build up a picture in three dimensions on if there is any issue.

 

[Stevers]

Twists in doors can be corrected by steaming them and giving them a slight reverse twist and then leaving them to set. If you've got the reverse twist right then they'll end up straight.
I tried this with my badly twisted kitchen door. I improved the situation no end, but wasn't able to completely correct it as it's hard to steam an entire door. I just used a wallpaper steamer on the one side of the frame that I'd stripped. Taking the door off and putting it in a temporay enclosure to steam it would be the way forward. If I had to guess I'd give it half the twist in the opposite direction and leave it to cool down and dry out. Heat and steam can be used to bend wood, so whether the door would need to be stripped first is moot - vapour permeability and all that.
Hot chemical dipping and then holding the wet door in that reverse twist might be something else to try.

 

[sgking]

Looks to be a very good quality door from the pics...I bet it weighs alot. Personally I'd get a carpenter or joiner in to give an opinion on how to rectify it, and maybe glazing some of the panels at same time.

As above, I'm sure I've seen YouTube vids of steaming doors, however you would need to board up or fit a temp front door whilst this takes place.

 

[Stevers]

Seeing that dreadful wedge shaped gap at the top in the original photos reminds me that I had to put wedges of wood on the top of both my heavy old front and back doors. Same sort of gap and not noticeable now. I'd completely forgotten that I'd had to do that!

Another option is to make the frame fit the door. It looks like someone had tried that on my back door which didn't fit very well at the bottom, but strangely, it was putting back the wedge, that they'd taken off the stop, that made it fit again.

There's enough variations on the panel to make me think it's hand carved. I'm guessing that would be an Edwardian take on a 'Queen Anne' style door - they were strange like that. What do other houses on the street have?

 

[fernicarry]

The letter flap and the mortice lock may have weakened the stile to the point that it became more prone to warping. Early letter flaps were tiny things. The drop at the top can be caused by the joints loosening off and the door going parallelogram shaped under its own weight as well as the hinges wearing. You might be able to find a joiner who can disassemble the door, replace or repair the stile and put it back together again square and flat. Someone like these guys (no connection other than I've visited their yard and they were pleasant and helpful).

Are there any best practice ways to validate that casement is plumb and square

Measure the diagonals. If they are the same then its square. Sit a laser level (one of the ones that projects a 2D plane) on the threshold and see how the sides and top of the casement match up. If you do get it repaired then same joiner should be able to fit it to the existing opening or adjust the stop beads to get them compatible with each other again. The trick will be finding said trades-person...

 

[Mart]

I've measured diagonals and overall dimensions inside frame - seems things are slightly wonky.

Great idea on laser level, I do have some somewhere, will need to have a dig around the garage.

 

[Cubist]

Another afterthought moment perhaps and perhaps also too late for @Mart but;

If that door frame/casment has, what is sometimes called a 'kick' in the bottom left corner - in other words, that corner has been pushed back away from the plain of the other corners of the frame - then the door would not seat properly in the the jamb there and its inner face would project into the room.