Brand new door hard to close......man screams out loud.....news at 11

[Peter Quinn]

I had the great pleasure of installing a prehung steel entry door for my BIL today a part of a kitchen gut they are doing. Couldn't believe the experience. I used to make doors mostly, at my last job, am making a large set of very complicated entries presently at new job. How the heck hard is it to set the door at the right height in the jamb? Its done with a freaking CNC machine at the factory no? I'm an idiot with a plunge router and a $.50 MDF template, mine come out pretty darn good, nearly perfect on the best day. I had to rebuild the rough sill completely, so I took the time to get it level, set the door, carefully plumbed and leveled it, secured hinge side, the lock side, making sure everything was straight as I went, no bows, even gaps.......the threshold weather seal pushes so hard on the adjustable sill you can barely close the door. The sill is adjusted all the way down. They simply set the hinge locations on the door too high, so the door sits too low for tolerances. I had to walk away days end with a barely functional door in place, no time to fix it today. I will fix it, dowel the screw holes, lower the hinges on the door 1/8" (top gap between door and jamb head was nearly 1/4", tells me door sits too low), make it work. But why should I have to? I remember following a thread recently where the OP was describing the same symptoms with a new door he had installed, carpenter told him they all do this? No dice. I'm going to email the company and tell them what I think of their product in some very direct terms. What do you want for $250? I want a door that opens and closes personally. End rant.

[Bill Orbine]

Sigh! And many people don't realize the cost of true craftsmanship thinking what's the matter with a $250 door with all sorts of poor workman/ machine fab issues?

[Tom M King]

Yeah, but it was made fast and cheap, the most important two factors in building anything. Nothing else is as important. I hate prehung doors.

[jack forsberg]

you can buy a exterior door for $250????????????????????

[Bill Orbine]

you can buy a exterior door for $250????????????????????

And less!!!!!!!!!!

[Paul Girouard]

Good luck with that Peter.

When you move the door up you may end up having to adjust the strike side escutcheon as well to get it to latch.
I'd suggest moving the hinges UP on the jamb, you can use long screws on the inner two holes that should catch the trimmer studs. You still will need to bang some dowel or thin rippings into the holes but by using long screws on the inner two holes (assuming the hinges are type with four screws per leaf). If the jamb is paint grade you might get by with putty to fill the gap , or you could use a wood dutchmen in the gap.

Sadly it's pretty common issue in todays building environment, remember the guy hanging doors in most of the door places is maybe making $12.00.

He's more than likely using a "Norfield" door hanging machine that's 30 years old , not a CNC. And any jig , or CNC for that matter, is only as good as the person maintaining and running the machine.

[Todd Burch]

I hear ya.

I can't belief the cr@p they call "new prehung doors" these days. I just installed a house full - both interior and exterior. I was sorely disappointed. Some hinges routed out of line with the others, causing the door to bow. Stops not lined up in the corners. Stops nailed in with the tiniest of brads way too far apart and not vertical. Staples joining the top corners of the jambs sticking out into the inside face of the jamb, out the top and out the sides - just about every place but in the top rail. Nails meant to hold the door closed fully set into the jamb, so they had to be dug out to be removed.

Todd

[Peter Quinn]

you can buy a exterior door for $250????????????????????

Yeah Jack, that was the upgrade with stainless steel threshold. They had cheaper ones. The door is fine for what it is and where it's going, it's the jamb fitment that's lousy. They didn't need to spend more time or money, just set the darn machine up correctly and watch that it stays there.

Paul, I'm thinking of making adjustments on the door for two reasons, the door hinge mortises are square, the jamb is round so harder to fill with dutchmen. And the strike actually hits the latch plate a bit low, so raising the door should correct both problems. I just can't believe they can call it a door if it won't operate correctly when perfectly plumb and level. The glass looks nice! It's a good solution for the average working person of medium income that doesn't have $3500 or more to dump on a custom entry. But in this case it would have been quicker if they sold me a door and jamb set with no mortises than to put them in the wrong place. Did I mention that they also router the jamb mortises way way too deep? That I can fix with a few slips of veneer, but again, you make thousands of units it this stuff....just how hard is it to get it right?

[Jim Andrew]

We used to have a wholesale lumber company in our town, and where they started guys was in the door shop. From there they moved to counter sales. Their doors sucked.

[Mel Fulks]

Jim, I agree, lack of good management is the problem. Even easy jobs will be done sloppily without it.
Sounds like the place you described considered the door units only a sufficiently annoying initiation to earn the real job of
salesman.

[Peter Quinn]

We used to have a wholesale lumber company in our town, and where they started guys was in the door shop. From there they moved to counter sales. Their doors sucked.

Hey...I started in the door shop of a medium sized millwork operation! Maybe they were trying to tell me something? That really is where they started new hires, boss considered it less complicated than cabinetry because it operates largely in two dimensions and one of those is fixed, so the plans are easier to read. I saw it as swinging two bats in baseball during warm up....if you can glue up a complicated entry with 18 lites or a heavy 6 panel door cabinets seem pretty easy after that.

[Phil Thien]

This is the 2nd thread I've seen in as many months about a door that wouldn't work smoothly because of the threshold. And it seems like this isn't discovered until the install is pretty much complete.

When I've installed doors, I tack them in place and then open/close the door a few times to make sure it operates smoothly.

Once I'm sure it works, I proceed to fasten the frame in the rough opening, watching my reveals, and I continue to check the swing of the door.

I think I'd catch a manufacturing defect like this pretty early, and I'd get a replacement.

[Kevin Jenness]

Sounds familiar. Years ago my neighbor bought a "custom" kitchen from a factory. The drawers were made with sliding dovetails, but the fit was so loose that the sides were stapled to the fronts to keep them attached. They probably made hundreds of drawers per day, all of them wrong, with an expensive machine capable of close tolerance work, because the guy setting it up didn't care or didn't know any better and no-one above him was paying attention. Keep in mind that $250 door brought in about half that to the shop making it.

[Tom M King]

This is the 2nd thread I've seen in as many months about a door that wouldn't work smoothly because of the threshold. And it seems like this isn't discovered until the install is pretty much complete.

When I've installed doors, I tack them in place and then open/close the door a few times to make sure it operates smoothly.

Once I'm sure it works, I proceed to fasten the frame in the rough opening, watching my reveals, and I continue to check the swing of the door.

I think I'd catch a manufacturing defect like this pretty early, and I'd get a replacement.

I don't use prehung often, but I do something similar. I set one (can't really say "hung" one) last week as a new entry door into a basement in a flipper house. I use screws through the brick molding, and check the opening. With only a couple of screws on each side, you can check the movement, but still back a couple out and adjust. The one I set ended up needing to have the lock side of the jamb wedged up a 1/4". It opens and shuts fine. We ended up having to pack mortar under the now out of level sill, and the lock side has a quarter more reveal at the top than the hinge side.

[Mark Bolton]

If your on a job installing a pre-hung door there is no sense lamenting over the times youve had the luxury of assembling your own jamb-set and doing your own mortise work. The two worlds are light years apart and your not on the better of the two jobs. There is simply no way you can make/assemble a jamb, mortise three pair of hinges, bore a lockset and latch, and a strike, for what a pre-hung costs. Its simply not possible. Im buying six panel pine interior doors for 180/ea (non-borg) and thats all Im going to get paid to install other than on a primo' or restoration job. Carrying on about the things we've done in the past is fruitless. You have to work with the cards your dealt.

Of course if your hanging your own from scratch because you refuse to work with pre-hungs and eating the loss thats your own business but its not the real world.

To Peters original post,.. my guess as to what would happen on the production job site is that the installer would put a bulldog or other very robust bar under the hinge side of the door in the same way you would a drywall kicker. They would loosen the hinge screws slightly, stomp on the bar, and with all their weight on the bar run the screws back in. They'd likely be 3" everywhere including into the door. The end result would be levering the threshold down slightly (stretching/bending/breaking the staples) and pinching the door as high as they can in hopes to get the heck out of there before the door sags its way down and starts dragging again...

Sad, but true.

I had recent batch of interior doors from a very sound supplier to date that were simply atrocious. Any problem you could imagine including problems with the slabs which couldnt have been avoided if Id eaten a hundred a door and hung them myself. In the end it became clear it was the perfect storm of problems. A bad lot of slabs from south america (all slabs origin), a lack of qualified help at the distributor so newbies galore, and dovetailing in to the lack of qualified help was the fact that the distributor was so overwhelmed they fell behind in keeping their equipment in spec so hinge mortises were bad, lock bores were off and blown out, and so on.

Needless to say there are about 10 or 12 doors in my shop (free) that were just not worth installing. Sadly the ones that went in were acceptable but not great in my opinion. A clear sign that its time to move to a different trade because the uber high end doesnt exist where I am.