Building An Exterior Door Jamb From Scratch

Installing a new door frame is not a difficult task and can be learned by understanding the simple steps involved.

Building an exterior door jamb from scratch.

Some preformed exterior doorjamb boards will already have weather stripping attached to them. Measure your door carefully and cut the opening to fit using a reciprocating saw. Add 1 1 2 inch to the height and cut two pieces. Follow along i hope you ll learn something and enjoy created.

If you re not using premade jamb material or if your walls are a nonstandard thickness you can buy 5 or 6 inch wide lumber and rip cut it to the width of the wall using a table saw. This is the first of three videos on hanging doors for those who want to see nick s not really a workshop w. Building a doorjamb is a relatively easy project. Measure the width and height of the door.

Installation of any door goes a lot easier if you mount the hinges on the door first rather than on the jamb. When building a door jamb to fit a standard wall with a two by four frame and 1 2 inch drywall on each side the width of the jamb board typically is 4 9 16 inches. Hinges usually go 8 inches from the door s top 9 inches from the bottom and at the. If you have to replace or repair a door jamb it s most advisable to build an entire new door frame.

Determine the size of the door opening. The door jamb is the vertical portion of the frame that runs along the sides of the door. Building your own jambs is cost effective because you can purchase slab doors cheaper than prehung units. A typical door opening is 2 inches 5 1 cm wider than the door size being installed to allow for the thickness of the jamb material and shims to plumb the jamb.

I m building a custom replacement exterior door for a roughly 100 year old house out of cedar.