Door box with own hands

When buying a door, it's not necessary to spend money on a new door frame, because you can make it yourself. The main difficulty is not so much in the manufacture as in the assembly of the frame for installing the door, since the cutting of joints and cuttings has its own specifics. In this article we will consider in detail the entire process of manufacturing and installation of the door frame.

Design features

In most cases, in shops, the door leaf is sold separately from the box and it is enough to find a suitable modelcomplicated. In addition, the purchased box may not fit in the size in the doorway, especially if you built the house yourself or make a redevelopment of the apartment.

Any door frames have a similar construction - a frame, folds and bars which are fastened together in a special way. As fasteners use special bolts or steel lining.

Measurements and sawing

For the manufacture of the door frame with your own hands, you will need special locksmith tools and handling skills. But first you need to make accurate measurements, so that when installing the finished box, there are no unforeseen difficulties.

There are two ways to take measurements:

• on the door;
• on the doorway.

For the first method, measure the sides of the door and add to the resulting dimensions of 5 cm( thickness of the door frame).After that, make measurements of the threshold and the upper part, making the same allowance of 5 cm. Calculate the footage and proceed with the manufacture of the corresponding elements of the box. Then fold the sawed bars to the floor in grooves, mark the top and bottom edges of the future door, not forgetting to add the thickness of the door. To make the cutting line clearly visible, make a notch on the bars that will be applied to the crossbar above and to the threshold.

Saw the prepared materials and adjust them to the required dimensions. In one of the side blanks, make two small slots to install the loops using a chisel and a hammer. The side on which the slots for the loops will be made is selected depending on which side the door will open.

In short, the entire process of manufacturing the interior door frame is as follows:

1. A smooth board with a thickness of at least 5 cm is cut into 4 equal parts, two of which correspond to the length of the door( doorway), and the remaining two - the width.
2. All elements are processed from three sides( the fourth side will be hidden in the wall, so it's pointless to waste time on it).
3. Depending on the width of the board, a slit is made where the door will fit, and it is made only on the side where the door will open. This gives protection from drafts and noise penetration.
4. If you want to install a box for a double door, the cuts must be on both sides.
5. The ends of the parts are treated with a plane, sanded with sandpaper, slightly smoothes the corners.

Standard dimensions of the door frame: the long elements of the door frame are 193 cm and the crossbeams are 90 cm. The depth of the cut must be about 1.5 cm with a board width of 5 cm.

Assembly and installation

To prevent unevenness in the installation process of the door framein the opening it is necessary to be able to use the building level and the plumb line. If the box gets crooked, the door can not close tightly, or you will not be able to hang it on the hinges at all.

If you are installing a box in an apartment or a house with stone walls, use wooden pegs and nails for fixing. When dismantling old doors in Soviet-built houses, you can see that the box was then fastened with 120 or 150 mm long nails. For more information about this, see the article "Dismantling Doors: Step-by-Step Instructions".

If you work with walls made from slabs, you can use only staples as fasteners.

Saws of the door frame

A very important point in the process of assembling the door frame is the creation of blanks. Saws are cuts on vertical and horizontal structural elements, due to which all parts adjoin each other as tightly and reliably as possible. Professional door collectors use two ways of sawing - at 45 ° and at 90 °.Let's consider each of them in more detail.

When filing a box under 45 °, the master takes the boards and places on the inner side of each of them the slant lines to remove the excess and get an angle of 45 °.Then removes the unnecessary part, with the angle from the outside being 45 °, and inside - 135 °.The length and width of all elements are preserved. Small cross bars are sawed from all sides, and vertical ones are only from the top( there is no need to cut the bottom, since the box will stand firmer on even "feet").

To assemble the door frame at 90 °, you must first place all parts of the structure on a flat surface. The corners are neatly connected by screws( 2 pcs in each corner).This method is much simpler and faster, but the appearance of such a box is not as aesthetic as in the case of 45 °."Direct" boxes are mainly put in sheds, cellars, bathrooms and other similar premises.

Installation of

hinges Before inserting the door frame into the opening, it is necessary to cut the hinges. They should be no less than 20 cm from the end of the door leaf. It is important to correctly calculate the depth of the loop in the element of the box. Note that with a closed door between the door frame and the canvas, a gap of 4 mm remains. It's easiest to cut the loop pad with an electric cutter, but if there was not such a tool, use the usual chisels and a hammer.

Attach a loop to the bar, circle with a pencil and cut out the desired part. For an ordinary wooden door, two pieces are enough - above and below. The lower loop should be located 21 cm from the edge of the frame, since 1 cm should be left on the gap between the floor and the door.

Screw the hinges and attach the door leaf to the box to transfer the location of the fixtures. It remains only to cut out similar grooves in the canvas and you can proceed to install the box.

How to install the door frame

The task of the door frame is to keep the door leaf in a stable position, so the construction itself must firmly "sit" in the doorway. For reliable fixation of the box, specialists use two methods: reinforce the frame with small rails located perpendicular to the posts, or add solid wide fixing angles. After placing the box in the opening, install the spacers in it, which fix it in the correct position. So it will be easier to screw the screws and finally fix the structure.

During operation, always use a plumb line to check the verticality of all elements. Also check the smoothness of the angles until the final fixation. The main difficulty lies in the fact that the door frame almost never gets up perfectly from the first time, and the position has to be corrected. To eliminate gaps between the frame and the wall use small wedges or mounting foam.

When you have adjusted the frame to the opening, it is necessary to fix the box on the slopes. Check the strength of the structure, make sure that nothing is stuck in the corners and sides( wedges, struts, rails, etc.).To fix the box to the slopes, use dowels. Before winding up to the end, check that the angle is equal to 90 °.

To "ennoble" the doorframe on top of it, you need to attach the platbands. For this use self-tapping wood, nails or heavy-duty building glue for wood. If you use self-tapping screws, you can cover the hats with decorative caps. On sale it is possible to find the platbands with special grooves, which need only to be snapped in order to keep them firmly.

Assembling the finished box

The fastening of the door frame, as well as the assembly, is quite a specific task, which is difficult for a person who does not have experience or even theoretical locksmith knowledge to cope with. If you are not sure about your capabilities, it is better to buy doors with a door frame. Such a ready-made kit is sold in disassembled condition and without hanging loops, so that the buyer independently chooses which way the door will open.

The assembly process of the finished kit:

1. Lay out the block bars and make sure that the shortest of them has grooves. If there is no groove, then it is necessary to fasten all parts of the door frame with nails or self-tapping screws.
2. Dock the top and side bars and gently knock them together. In order not to damage the wooden structure, use a wooden kyanik.
3. Fix the elements with screws, check the smoothness of the corners and the strength of the structure.
   
4. The protruding ends of the bars should be cut with a hacksaw so that they do not interfere with the assembly.
5. Measure the width of the top of the structure and cut the rake slightly longer, then nail it to the side pieces with nails.
6. Remove the excess ends of the rack.
7. On the inside of the horizontal bar from above, retreat 20 cm, attach a loop and circle it with a pencil.
8. Bottom step back 21 cm and circle the loop the same way.
9. Cut the chisel pad to fasten the hinge, having previously calculated the depth( taking into account the 4 mm gap).
10. Screw the hinges with screws and attach the box to the door. Transfer the marking of the loops and cut out the attachment points on the canvas.
11. Measure the height of the doorway and make a note on the uneven bars.
12. Carefully lift the U-shaped structure and insert it into the opening.
13. Check the correct position with the construction level and the plumb line.
    
14. If you need to punch one of the sides, insert a block of suitable thickness between the wall and the box.
15. The remaining gap fill with mounting foam - it will not only make the box position even stronger, but also prevent the possibility of drafts.
    
16. Attach the frame with dowels to the slopes, remove the temporary struts, cut out the projecting wedges and install the platbands.

Video about the installation of the door frame will allow you to more clearly understand the process: