Inset doors in out of square openings

[roger wiegand]

Agree that if they are that far off they are probably not going to look good with inset doors. However if I were going to do it I'd make an oversize square door, scribe it to the opening less the width of the bead, plane it to the scribed, out of square shape, than attach the bead.

[Tom Ewell]

Any reason you can't overlay an entire new face frame with fitted doors to the existing, hide the old, maybe trim the old down some so when the doors are open it will diminish the obvious cover up.

[Michael Weber]

This is the current plan. First, cover the exposed cabinet sides with thin plywood or make false panels. Then I'm going to resaw solid wood to 1/8 inch and recover the rails and stiles. I'll use wide enough strips to cover up any out of plumb stiles, fill in with wood behind the overlay and use a trim router with a top bearing to trim the fill flush with the overlay and square corners with a chisel. Anyone foresee a problem?

[johnny means]

Fit one corner of the door so it fits tightly with an edge sander, scribe the other two edges the same way using a compass/scriber to make your marks. I do it every single day as most of my jobs are inset. I'm incapable of building a perfectly square door or a perfectly square opening. It's pretty quick and painless once you get good at it, I can fit ten to fifteen doors in an hour.

You do this professionally?

[Martin Wasner]

I'm assuming because I said I can not build a perfectly square door or opening you question that. I mean perfectly square. I run a 3/32" margin, I over size the doors a bit about a 1/16" in width and a 1/32" in height, and just scribe then in with the edge sander. Pulling a tape on any given door, I'm likely less than the width of the line on the tape out of square, so less than 1/64"?

I don't build everything that goes through the shop either. I don't control a stile being a few thousandths big or any of the other hundred factors that can make a door or opening not perfect.

But they're perfect when they go out the door. (Until the temperature changes anyways.....)

[Kevin Woodhead]

Not sure if this will work for your situation, but I'd rather fit the face frames to the doors rather than the other way around. I'd make a square template to fit my square/mitered/beaded doors + the reveal I wanted, then clamp it to the face frame opening and rout it square, finishing out the corners with a chisel. Of course if you have many different sized openings and doors this might get tedious.