How to Install an Interior Door

Dad, how do I?

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Transcript provided by YouTube. Slightly edited with AI.

Hey kids, it’s great to see you again today. I’m going to walk you through how to replace an interior door in your home. So, I’m going to take this one out, and we’re going to put in a new one. I’ll walk you through what that looks like. But first, we have a dad joke for you: When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. Anyway, let’s get started.

When changing out a door, the easiest way is to get a prehung door. I’ll show you what that looks like because basically, it’s the frame, the door, and everything. If we just wanted to try to change this door, it’d be pretty complicated. The amount of time you would put in trying to just swap out the door compared to just replacing the frame and everything else… You’ll see this frame is an old frame and it’s wood. We want it to be white, so I’d have to paint all that too. It’s just so much easier to pull the whole thing off. Alright, so the first thing we want to do is remove the trim. You want to use a knife so that it’s not sticking to the paint. We’re just going to take that and run it right down there. Now, we’re just going to use a pry bar of some sort and try to get it underneath there. Be careful not to damage your trim. Kind of work it a little bit. Okay, that popped free. Got to be careful on these seams too, because a lot of times, guys will shoot a nail through there. We are trying to save this if we can. Worst-case scenario, we have to get new trim. That’s not the end of the world, but looks like it’s perfectly good to me. So, we’re going to try to keep it.

I did want to be able to show you this, so I might turn the camera around so you can see what’s going on here. There’s this frame right here, see? That’s just framing the door. We’re going to pull this whole thing out and just stick it in a new frame, just like that.

If you want to remove a door without taking the hinges off, you can just pull the pins like that. See? That’s there. And I’m going to do the same thing on the bottom. You just stick something underneath there and pop it out. You can pull the pin, now that door will just come off of there. Okay, this door will just come. We can just remove it.

Now you can just see that we’re going to this thing. This is just a frame here and it’s pounded in. Probably pounded in here. Okay.

Okay, okay. So, you just want to make sure, double and triple check this, that you get the right door. So, this opening here, I measured the door beforehand, and the door itself is 28 inches. Okay, with the frame, it’s 29 1/2 inches. And the way this is, is 30 inches. So, they give you some wiggle room, right? You don’t want to have it be so tight you can’t get it in here. That would cause a lot of frustration. So, they build in some wiggle room for you. So, I do have the correct door. I double-checked that. And it usually comes primed. So, I’m going to go ahead and put a coat of paint on it too. But before you put the coat of paint on it, make sure that you got the right door, right? Otherwise, you’re going to be out a door and then you got to get the right door, and you got one that’s painted that you can’t use. So, anyway, double and triple-check that. I’ve got my prehung door. I’ve double-checked everything to make sure it’s the right door.

When you do this, there’s going to be nails. So, you want to make sure all your nails are gone because just one little nail stuck in here is going to be frustrating for you. You’re going to be like, “Why is this thing not fitting?” And you’re just bumping up against a silly little nail that’s still sticking out just a half an inch. And it’s… you know, these things are tight enough to where you don’t have wiggle room to accommodate that. So, you got to make sure it’s clear. So, make sure you have no nails on either of these sides or sticking out the front. We just want to make sure it’s clean. It is. I went ahead and already double-checked all that. So, anyway, so we’re getting ready.

And here’s another thing. When you’re picking out your door, you got to pick out the correct size. And then you also got to pick out the side that you want the knob to come out, right? These prehung doors come set for you. I knew I wanted this thing… see, my hinges are just like they were on the old ones. They’re on this side, which means the door is going to swing out. You would have been in a bind if you had it swinging in. Can’t have that door swinging in, right? It’s got to swing out. So just be careful with that, make sure you know where your knob is. Pop those off. Alright, and now we’re going to pop those pins out of those hinges to remove the door. My last door had two hinges, this one has three. Okay, see? That’s just a plug that holds that together for shipping. Okay, this door is off of here now.

Okay, so now I just got my frame. Go ahead and put it in there. So, I got it in. I had to kind of… see, I got tile at the bottom here, right? And so, this thing wasn’t quite going down inside, and so I just had to kind of remove a little bit of the tile, and then now it’s sliding in. Now I got a different problem on the inside. I’ve got some sheetrock that’s hanging down. So, I’m going to have to trim that back and I’m going to go ahead and get a tool to do that, which will make that job way easier. So alright, so you see this, this is what I’m hitting. I got the frame, and then there’s just this little bit of sheetrock here. It won’t let me get it all the way through. So, I’m going to go ahead and remove that. You could use a knife if you needed to, since I have this tool, it’s going to make it that much easier. And I have things covered with this plastic, so even though it’s going to create a little bit of a mess, that’s okay.

So, we should be good now. That’s what was holding it up there. You go, beautiful thing. Alright, since I just made that mess, I went ahead and cleaned that up. Right? Because if you don’t, and we’re in the middle of this, I’m going to be tracking that, and you know, I’ve got to go get something, and I’ve got the sheetrock dust or the drywall dust on my feet, and I’m walking, and you know, tracking it around. Clean it up first

before you go any further. I understand that you probably want to get the door installed, but it’s best to do that first.

So, what we’re going to do here is I need to make sure this is level, and I’m going to make sure this side is level, because this is where the hinges are. And that actually looks… it’s actually plumb, is what you call it when it’s this way, you know, but everybody knows the term level. So, we’re using this particular side and it looks pretty good. Not going to be perfect, but so we can actually do… go ahead and put that one in. I’ve got… so it depends on what you have. You know, you might have… there’s a couple ways you can do this. You can use it with a hammer and nail, right? If you got that, you could probably put a screw in it. The screw head’s going to show a little bit more. And so, I’m going to use my air compressor and my nail gun, and I’m just going to go ahead and shoot that in. I’m just going to put, for now, I’m going to put two nails, because I don’t want to make this permanent just yet.

Okay, and I want to keep it flush here, right? Because this is where my trim’s going to go. Okay, so it’s important that it’s flush on this front or close to it, right? Again, doesn’t have to be perfect. So, I don’t… I didn’t need any shims to get that to come out right, but I will on the other side. Okay, and it’s flush there. Put a nail in here, and then the nail in down here. Okay, for now, that’s all we’re going to do. I’m going to take a measurement, make sure my door will still fit. Let’s just see what this looks like. Obviously, on the top, you know, that’s since it’s got a bracket here, or it’s got a top piece connecting this… this is going to be fine. Twenty-eight inches, no problem. Thing is, on the bottom, it can get a little wider, it can get a little narrower. So, you want to make sure that you’re good there too. Okay, so it is. Yeah, it looks great actually, right where it’s at.

So, what I’m going to do is I have these shims, okay? And you can just buy these. They come in a little pack like this, and I’m just going to go ahead and put those in. I’m going to check my level on this side too, or the plumb, right? Yeah, it’s about the same as it is on the other side. Okay, so now I can just put that in there. It’s a little thick, so all you need to do is just use two of those. See? That’s what a shim is, just like that, and then you can just put a couple in if you need to, and you can slide them back and forth like that to make them thicker, right? So, we’re going to go ahead and put that in here. Let’s see what it looks like. Something like that. And then with that tool that I have, I can just buzz that right off, right? So, I’m going to go ahead and see what we look like.

Okay, it’s a little wide right there compared to what I want. Twenty-eight, about twenty-eight and a quarter, because the door is twenty-eight and you got to have some wiggle room for the hinges and everything. So, twenty-eight and a quarter. Right here, it’s about twenty-eight and three-eighths. So, I’m going to go a little bit. Okay, see what that guy looks like. And then you can just bust these off too, unless it’s a little thicker, then it makes it a little harder, right? You got to… you probably have to cut it. So, I’m going to do that and slide that guy right on the button. Perfect. Okay, I’m going to go ahead and put a nail in here.

Okay, and I’m going to put it right into that shim. Okay, we are looking golden here.

Okay, everything’s looking pretty good. I just put a shim down at the bottom, and now I’m going to do it one last one up here. See that? And then I can just kind of pull them and make them fill in the gap, right? So, when you use a shim, you can just see that. So, you start out kind of thin, and then you can just slide them together and see how that… it’s getting thicker and thicker all the way up to there, right? So, that’s what I’ve done there. Double-check. I think it’s always good to double-triple-check. We’re good. It’s right up near the top, so this one’s going to be the easiest one anyway. So, we do that. Again, okay, again, I’m just going to put one nail.

Alright, so when you’re tapping these in, you could, if you wanted to, just use a hammer. It’s not a bad idea to use something to protect it so that you’re not marking up the metal, right?

Okay, it’s a beautiful thing. Okay, I can put a few more nails in now because I know it’s good.

Alright, so we just got to put the trim back. I’m just going to start on one end and work my way around. You want to have a little bit of a reveal here, meaning this is held back a little bit from this edge right here. You don’t want to have it right next to it. Just a little bit. One in here, okay, and then the way you do trim is you just work your way around.

Okay, beautiful. So, I went ahead and installed the doorknob. I have a separate video for that if you need to know how to do it. It’s fairly simple, but I walk you through all the steps. And I just didn’t want to take the time in this video to show you how to do that. Alright, so I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for watching and God bless you.

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

Welcome to “Dad, how do I?” Here you will find “How To” videos by a dad who has raised 2 adults (and we still talk). I will do my best to provide useful , practical content to many basic tasks that everyone should know how to do. On this channel, you will find a variety of content like How To’s, Story times, Dad Chats, and more!

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