Installing a Door Jamb Extension, Pt. 1
Yesterday we finally broke through the 'baby barrier' and--believe it or not--did some work on the house. With power tools. And wood. And a tape measure. No, seriously.
It wasn't a full blown project, just part of one. We're definitely pacing ourselves here. It was a rather complicated one, though, so bonus points for that. I decided to tackle the jamb extension for the master bathroom door upstairs.
The reason we're doing this project at all goes way back to how we framed out the second floor. One of the original walls upstairs was very thin because it was built with 2x4s turned flat. Why would they have done that? Who knows. Anyway, when going in this time we decided to strengthen it by, well, sistering the entire wall. The good news is that we've ended up with a wall with normal thickness. The bad news is that when we reinstalled the door jamb it was too narrow.
Saturday I started the process of installing a jamb extension to match the new wall thickness.
For starters, I took some measurements to determine how wide the jamb extension should be. Basially, the gap between the old door jamb and the outer face of the new drywall. It turned out to be 1 3/4" all the way around, although there was some variance.
As luck would have it, we ended up with an extra door jamb due to the changes upstairs (it's being replaced with a pocket door). So, we've decided to use that jamb for the extension. The wood already matches and the boards are already cut to accept the header.
Even better, this was my first real-world chance for me to use our new table saw.
After cutting the jambs down to the proper width, today I went over them with some of the Burnished Walnut stain we've been using. Then I'll just need to go over them with a few layers of shellac and install them upstairs.
See, real work is under way! :-)
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Comments
Have fun breaking in your new table saw. You'll probably get the bug to do more wood working.
Posted by: Chuck | March 12, 2006 4:30 PM
Way to go. It's great that the old jamb works- and I'm impressed with work with the new baby. It must mean that Grace is a happy & good natured baby. Or the sound of power tools may just be the thing that is familiar and calms her!
Posted by: Trissa | March 12, 2006 7:55 PM
Out of curiosity, I've noticed that you're going with shellac instead of polyurethane on all your stained wood. Any reason?
Posted by: sixtoe | March 12, 2006 8:01 PM
They had to extend the jambs on several doors added when my house was cut up into apartments because my walls are all extra thick. They did a good job because I didn't even know they had been extended until I removed them. When done right no one will ever know.
That is strange about the 2X4s truned sidways. I wonder why they did it that way?
Posted by: Greg | March 12, 2006 10:45 PM
There's actually no code requirement in any jurisdiction that I know of for studs to be installed perpendicular to the face of a non-structural, non-rated partition. It's better for sound and stability, obviously, but doing it sideways was once fairly common when they wanted to squeeze every square inch they could out of a space.
Sixtoe~ you'll have a hard time finding people who are really knowledgable about older woodwork who have much nice to say about Poly. I bet you could find some interesting discussion here or on houseblogs.net by searching for "Shellac", "Polyurethane", "Wax", "oil finish",etc.
Posted by: Nathan | March 13, 2006 11:06 AM
I'll echo Nathan's comments about the studs and the shellac. Personally, I can say I've been very please with the look we've gotten from our shellac. If you want to get more of our thoughts, just use the search bar on the right-hand side to find a few entries we've written about it.
- Aaron
Posted by: Aaron | March 13, 2006 2:16 PM