Door Casings Wider Than Walls

[Brett Bobo]

I'm in the process of replacing all of the trim and there are several door locations where the width of the door casing will be wider than the adjacent wall. The overall look resembles the Craftsman style so there will be a plinth block, casing, fillet, frieze, and cap around each door. The door casing is 5 1/4" wide but there are several spots where the wall space on the side of the jamb is only a couple of inches, 2-3.

Is there a standard solution for accommodating a narrower wall than the width of the casing? From what I can think of, there appears to be two options:

1. Rip the casing down and scribe it to the adjacent wall and adjust all other components of the casing, e.g. plinth block, frieze, etc.

2. Wrap the casing to the adjacent wall to match all other casings. I'm not sure if this will look odd but at the same time, doing option 1 may look odd too if everything is considerably thinner.

Additionally, I have an angled wall with a door so the same problem exists at this areas too. I don't know if the solution to this situation differs but option 2 may look better in this instance than option 1.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Brett

[Chris Padilla]

Brett,

Luckily for me, I only had one door with one leg of casing that had the too wide problem. My casing was simpler than yours so ripping it to width (just the one leg) was fine and it is hardly noticeable.

I think yours because of the the plinth blocks/caps/etc. is going to make it stand out more but it all depends on the design within the plinth block, cap, etc. If the plinth block has a rosette of some kind then things will look funny.

I think the best solution will also be the most expensive: Adjust the entire casing but scale it down to fit. This means getting/designing smaller plinth blocks, etc. and possibly the casing depending on its design.

The next thing is to skip the plinth block, cap, etc. and just miter the casings and possibly skip the fancy cap. Again, depending on the casing design, ripping it might not be all that noticeable. Some doors may just have to look less grand but could still contain elements of all the rest.

If I ever design my own home, I will never put a door so close to wall if I can help it. Drywall in these narrow areas can be a pain to fix, too.

Can you post some pictures? Those always help.

[Robert LaPlaca]

I'm in the process of replacing all of the trim and there are several door locations where the width of the door casing will be wider than the adjacent wall. The overall look resembles the Craftsman style so there will be a plinth block, casing, fillet, frieze, and cap around each door. The door casing is 5 1/4" wide but there are several spots where the wall space on the side of the jamb is only a couple of inches, 2-3.

Is there a standard solution for accommodating a narrower wall than the width of the casing? From what I can think of, there appears to be two options:

1. Rip the casing down and scribe it to the adjacent wall and adjust all other components of the casing, e.g. plinth block, frieze, etc.

2. Wrap the casing to the adjacent wall to match all other casings. I'm not sure if this will look odd but at the same time, doing option 1 may look odd too if everything is considerably thinner.

Additionally, I have an angled wall with a door so the same problem exists at this areas too. I don't know if the solution to this situation differs but option 2 may look better in this instance than option 1.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Brett

I trimmed out a whole home using plinths blocks, heads and really wide casing.. Lucky for me the really wide door casing came in 5 1/2" and a somewhat smaller 3 1/2" wide sister size, I used the smaller size in situations like you outlined, where the wider casing wouldn't work..

Just to clarify, on a given door that the normal wide casing wouldn't work, I substituted the narrower sister casing on both sides of the jambs..

Good luck

[Larry Edgerton]

I have Fluted trim, plinth blocks, and multi-layer head trims in the house I am sitting in. I'm looking at the one door that dives into the wall, and I made the trim with the one flute missing that would be at the wall line, and fit it to the wall.

I don't care for the smaller size trim on one side, I have seen it done, and I don't think it has good balance, in other words looks like a mistake.

How much room do you have at your angled wall at the point where the trim face would meet the wall? On a square corner I would not wrap the trim around, but if the angled wall was tight, I think it would make an interesting detail. You would have to make sure the door was centered well for what ever you do, but it could be a cool detail that sets that area off. Kind of like you will see on bay windows in historic homes, with a twist.

The new house I am building for myself, a modified one room schoolhouse replica, will have about 6" wide miltilayer casings, so I was real careful with layout not to get into the situation you are finding yourself in. To be fair though, I restore a lot of old homes and there is that same situation in every one, and it just adds to the charm.

Have fun, Larry

[Rich Engelhardt]

there appears to be two options:

Option 3 is to replace the doors w/one that's smaller.
That's what I did.
Of course, I had that option open because I was replacing the doors anyhow.

[Brett Bobo]

Thanks for the responses thus far!

Chris,
Yeah, I'll try to get some photos posted as it'll probably make this simpler to explain.

Larry,
There's about 3" on each side of the angled wall for the casing. The angled wall has an internal angle with the adjacent walls of about 135 degrees. I thought wrapping the trim may be a good idea as well, however, there's a light switch on the adjacent wall that would be partially covered/recessed by the wrapped casing. I'd prefer not to move the switch so should the trim still be wrapped?

After looking at these areas again last night, there's a minimum of about 3" of wall space for most of these areas, with some having up to 4". Additionally, there are areas where two, adjacent doors are close together, not allowing for the 5 1/4" casing width. So, I've considered installing a two-piece, L-shaped casing in these areas and a continuous fillet, frieze, and cap. Do you think this will look odd? Can the L-shaped casing be butt jointed or should it be mitered?

Switching gears slightly--the baseboard is a three-piece build up with a 3/4"x5 1/4" bottom piece, a 3/4"x1 1/2" pieced rotated 90 degrees to give a 3/4" reveal between the top and bottom pieces, and a 3/4"x1 3/4" tall top piece. Would it look odd to have butt joints on the bottom and/or middle pieces and then miter the top piece, which will be the most visible? I should add that all of the trim is painted so putty and caulk should hide any gaps or seams. I'm just trying avoid any unnecessary mitering that won't be easily visible, without compromising the standard look of mitered baseboards or mitered trim, in general. Here's a similar photo of the built-up base:

Thanks in advance,
Brett

[David Thompson 27577]

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Switching gears slightly--the baseboard is a three-piece build up with a 3/4"x5 1/4" bottom piece, a 3/4"x1 1/2" pieced rotated 90 degrees to give a 3/4" reveal between the top and bottom pieces, and a 3/4"x1 3/4" tall top piece. Would it look odd to have butt joints on the bottom and/or middle pieces and then miter the top piece, which will be the most visible? I should add that all of the trim is painted so putty and caulk should hide any gaps or seams. I'm just trying avoid any unnecessary mitering that won't be easily visible, without compromising the standard look of mitered baseboards or mitered trim, in general. Here's a similar photo of the built-up base:

Thanks in advance,
Brett

Any of the pieces that have a profile (the shoe, the top cap, and the intermediate nosing) will need to be mitered for outside corners, and coped for inside corners.

The flat pieces can be butt-joined in the inside corners, but need to be mitered for outsides.

[Brett Bobo]

David,
For inside corners, do you think it would look best for all pieces to be mitered? Actually, none of the pieces I'm using are profiled, just square edges. Also, the trim is out of MDF so my preference is to miter all of the inside corners since I've found it difficult to cope MDF--too soft to get clean cuts. Thanks for the help.

[David Thompson 27577]

David,
For inside corners, do you think it would look best for all pieces to be mitered? Actually, none of the pieces I'm using are profiled, just square edges. Also, the trim is out of MDF so my preference is to miter all of the inside corners since I've found it difficult to cope MDF--too soft to get clean cuts. Thanks for the help.

If none of the pieces have a profile, then butt joints on the inside corners are EXACTLY EQUAL to coped joints. Miters will have a tendency to open and close as the seasons change.

I'll let you decide about the outside corners. I would worry that house movement with the seasons will open any kind of joint you use there -- miters or butts. MAybe if you use miters, and either spline them, or use biscuits........

[Brett Bobo]

If none of the pieces have a profile, then butt joints on the inside corners are EXACTLY EQUAL to coped joints.

David, you're exactly right, which is something I didn't realize with all pieces being square. There's not a difference, visually, in mitered joints vs. coped joints vs. butt joints, correct? I think you just made my weekend a lot easier.

[Peter Quinn]

I have this situation in numerous parts of my old house for both door and window casings, and they all just butt into the opposing wall. The casing on the butt side gets ripped to fit a bit over and scribed to the wall, a slight back bevel, like 1 or 2, maybe even 3 degrees depending on the condition of the wall you are meeting, will make this scribe easier. Any details that fall outside the rip area get eliminated. The other side gets the full width and same head treatment as any other opening. My casings have a back band, but in these cases the butt side gets no back band, and the band on the head simply dead ends at the wall intersection. With the complex built up head, the whole head simply dies into the wall, and the part of the casing that fits in the area between wall and reveal dies into the head. End of the day, it looks a lot more normal than concocting some "mini me" casing. I have run into similar situations in the field occasionally, and I treat them the same way.

Idealy, IMO, a good architect would avoid these situations when designing a house or retrofit as much as possible, as I look around my house I feel almost every one of these situations could have been avoided with a little fore though and planning. But once you are standing there with all the finishes done except casings, its sort of hard to say "Hey, dummy, move that opening over 2 1/2" so my casing fits please!". Having had my work criticized enough times by picky self righteous architects or designers, I won't miss an opportunity to poke one in the ribs when their pencil (or mouse these days) fails to be as sharp as maybe it should have been. Even if they died 100 years ago. Luckily a good trim carpenter can make up for almost all of a designs short comings.