Cutting the bottom of a door for new carpet and trips to the hospital

How to cut the bottom off a door for new carpet

The Oxfordshire Carpentry Company take no responsibility for any loss or injury in regard to this blog. This blog is for information and comment only.

A common occurrence is doors rubbing on new carpet, sometimes the carpet company will trim the bottoms off at a cost of around £60.00 a door or sometimes you have to call in a carpenter to do the job.

On the face of it this is a job that any half decent Do It Yourselfer could do – a job in the 1970’s that most dads would have done. The problem is just because you can do a job it does not mean that it has been finished properly and in the long run it may be cheaper to pay a professional.

This is how I would take the bottom of a rubbing door:

Set a bench or two trestles up outside, I always like to cut outdoors, no one likes dust around the house and I do not like it in my lungs, most wood dust is carcinogenic not to mention any finishes including lead in pre 1968 paint (British Standard BS 4310).

Pull the door up as much as you can so it rubs, making sure that you do not pull it too far

Scribing the door bottom

to rip off any veneer. Rest a carpenter’s pencil on its widest edge on the carpet next to the door and run it along the bottom of the door, this mark should be 4mm – 6mm above the carpet. If you have no carpenters pencil pack up a normal pencil from the carpet.

Now it is time to take the door off. There is a good chance that the hinges and screws will be covered in paint, if the screws are slotted you will need to clear the slots with a screwdriver blade and a mallet – you should always use a mallet when hitting another tool, it saves the tool but more importantly it hurts your lower thumb a lot more using a hammer if you miss the top of the screwdriver. If the screws are Posidrive or Phillips (yes, there is a difference) you will need to chip away at the paint until a screwdriver fits.

Undo the screws. Start with the bottom hinge and work up, if you start at the top and work down the door will fall on you and possibly bend or snap the bottom hinge if it is cast iron. Do not use an electric screwdriver to remove the screws. If the screws are slots the blade of an electric screwdriver will almost certainly bounce out of the slot and end up in your hand, blood on the carpet and best, a day down the John Radcliffe at worst. If you use an electric screwdriver on Posidrive screws you could round off the top of the screw and end up having to drill it out with a high-speed steel drill bit which will probably snap as you use it. All screws out, there is a good chance that the door is still in position due to the paint holding it in place. You now need to run a sharp Stainley knife around the hinges, this needs quite a lot of force, be very careful, these knives cut deep, watch your hands, fingers and legs when cutting – lots of blood this time and maybe a longer visit to the big white building in Headington!

Once you have counted and have all the fingers that you started with you can pull the door away from the lining – careful here as you can split the lining, if you do, keep the piece of wood that split away for gluing back on later. The door may be heavy; the problem is you don’t know how heavy until it is away from the lining.

Take the door downstairs which could weigh 40 KG plus, making sure that you do not drop it or take sections of plaster out of the ceiling or walls with it. Set it down on your trestles.

Now for the cutting, you need to score a line with a Stainley knife over the pencil line that you marked earlier – that knife again, be careful, this time it could be a slash to your mid body and fingers. This knife line will stop any veneer from splitting.

If you are intending to plane the bottom of the door you will need to cut25mm or so on your knife line from the side of the door that you are working to – if you do not the end grain will split out and ruin the door.

You now need to plane the bottom of the door, you can use a conventional steel plane which has to be sharp, it is no use digging a rusty one out of the shed that was last used two weeks before the Falklands conflict. Sharpening a planes iron is a skill so you may be better buying or hiring a power plane. A power plane has two blades which are fixed to a cylinder which spins at around 1500 times per minute – that is 50 cuts per second, by the time you realise that your finger is in it there is not much of your finger left, in fact you hear the noise of the blades cutting before you brain sends out pain signals! Power planers have no guards.

Once you have plained the door to your mark and have not split the veneer of split out the end grain it is time to re-hand the door.

You could of course use a saw instead of a plane. If you fancy using a hand saw, make sure it is a sharp one, far more accidents are caused with blunt tools than sharp ones, in

saying that a new hard toothed hand saw can make a mess of your fingers and if it flicks it can leave have a dozen bleeding tram marks on the back of your hand. After over 40 years my left hand looks like it was the inspiration for Harry Beck’s tube map.

Or you could use a handheld circular saw, just don’t. They have made horror films with these things in. The blade is around 3mm thick so if you slip the cut is quite difficult to stitch and as you will need to have over 35mm of the blade exposed you could be looking at cutting into tendons and muscle.

Before you take the door back inside and upstairs it is good practice to take the arris of off the edge of the bottom. The arris is the sharp edge caused by the cutting, just round the edge with dome 120 grit sandpaper.

Take the door back indoors and once again try not to cause any damage to walls and ceilings. Offer the hinges up to the lining – you will quickly notice that the hinges do not line up, well you have cut 6mm from the bottom of the door, you need to pack the door up so the hinges locate in their original positions. Now simply screw the door back on, you may have to plug the screw holes in the lining if the screws are do not grip. You can make the plugs by whittling a piece of softwood with a Stanley knife.

Once the door is back on and swinging it may not fit, this is probably due to a piece of packing slipping from behind a hinge, if you can not find the piece of packing you will need to make a new piece or pieces and slip it or them behind the relevant hinge.

All you now need to do is repeat the above for as many doors you have and clean any blood up from the carpet.

A carpenter will probably charge around £200.00 for half a dozen doors and on reflection that sounds very good value to me.