Trimming Doors Without Power Tools

[albaPhenom]

I recently got a joiner in to fit some doors and skirtings for me. It turned out to be the biggest blunder I've made yet because my whole reasoning was that I wanted a really good finish to the works and it would be best to employ a tradesman to achieve.

Made a **** of most of it in my opinion and the money he was paid I should have used to buy a plunge saw, mitre saw and brad nailer. Turns my stomach every time I think about it tbh... anyway.

The guy fit a door in my daughters room prior to the carpets going in, he cut it to suit the bare floor boards leaving not enough room for the carpet/underlay. I need to remove about 15mm from the bottom and re-hang the door but I don't have a power saw for the job.

Can this be tackled with hand tools and still achieve a nice straight cut?

 

[Deleted member 174758]

You could do the job with a knife, a straight edge, a tape measure, a sharp hand saw and a sharp plane (15mm is too much to plane off IMHO) - the problem is that you need to know how to saw straight by hand as well as how to sharpen, set-up and use a hand plane. You'll also need a couple of trestles to work on

Questions are, do you know how to plane and can you saw straight? If you can't use these tools proficiently you'll struggle

The line to cut to is marked out then knifed (to sever the fibres on the stiles, if present, or to cut the fibres across on veneered doors). Knife both sides if the door as well as the ends. This will prevent fibres breaking out and leaving a ragged edge when you saw the bottom of the door off.

Using the hand saw cut across the door. You need to sight down the saw with both eyes, so you can see both sides of the blade. Cut to within 1mm of the knife line,keeping the kerf on the waste sidevofcthe line. As you get to the end of the cut support the off cut to prevent it breaking away.

Surface the bottom of the door off with the plane, planing in from each side to the middle to avoid break out at the ends.

Finally I always put a 1mm or so chamfer on the front and rear faces of the bottom of the door. This is hardly noticeable (like the tiny radius or chamfer on the edges of a door) but with veneered doors in particular it reduces the tendency to chip at the bottom of the door if the carpet catches in the door at any time

 

[Notch7]

Can this be tackled with hand tools and still achieve a nice straight cut?

if you are skilled with a hand saw....

mark both sides of the door with a stanley knife very accurately

get a brand new saw and cut slowly checking both sides -you are probably safest cutting a touch away from the knife line
then sand a small round on the bottom edge -with sand paper wrapped tightly around a bit of wood

 

[albaPhenom]

You could do the job with a knife, a straight edge, a tape measure, a sharp hand saw and a sharp plane (15mm is too much to plane off IMHO) - the problem is that you need to know how to saw straight by hand as well as how to sharpen, set-up and use a hand plane

Yeah this is exactly my concern, I'm not experienced enough in carpentry to feel confident in cutting a straight enough line with a hand saw... most likely end up looking like a dog ****ing in the snow.

 

[albaPhenom]

The stanley knife and straight edge tip is a great one, I hadn't thought about doing that and would likely have just marked a pencil line. I might give this a go tbh.

 

[foxhole]

If they are cheaper hollow doors then there may only be 15-20 mm of timber in the base and your carpenter may have already removed most of it .So you could end up with a open void at the base.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

If they are cheaper hollow doors then there may only be 15-20 mm of timber in the base and your carpenter may have already removed most of it .So you could end up with a open void at the base.

In which case, you might be able to glue a piece of timber in, using suitable clamps until the glue sets.

 

[albaPhenom]

If they are cheaper hollow doors then there may only be 15-20 mm of timber in the base and your carpenter may have already removed most of it .So you could end up with a open void at the base.

They're decent XL Joinery Shaker semi-solid doors, I'm not convinced he removed much if anything from the height... the door was squint in the opening too and leaned out of the frame in the top right corner. He blamed the door frame for being out... also had removed the door stop from the head of the door and never put it back on before leaving. It wasn't till he had left and I went back upstairs and noticed it.

It might be for the best that I've had to remove this and refit.

https://www.directdoors.com/products/victorian-shaker-4-panel-white-primed-door-bzc

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I recently got a joiner in to fit some doors and skirtings for me. It turned out to be the biggest blunder I've made yet because my whole reasoning was that I wanted a really good finish to the works and it would be best to employ a tradesman to achieve.

Good, proper tradesmen are few and far between these days, even more difficult to track down - better to invest in the tools and learn how to do it yourself. Your finish might not match a proper tradesman, but no doubt it will be considerably better than some of the botch-it and run brigade.

 

[albaPhenom]

Good, proper tradesmen are few and far between these days, even more difficult to track down - better to invest in the tools and learn how to do it yourself. Your finish might not match a proper tradesman, but no doubt it will be considerably better than some of the botch-it and run brigade.

I'm pig sick. The very first thing I said to him as he came through the door was "out of everything I've done so far, this makes me the most nervous because it's the finishing work and it needs to be a quality finish", the first thing he did was mitre cut two pieces of skirting for an internal corner and bang them together.

There was a difference in height between the newly skimmed plastered walls and the existing door linings, I had asked him to come out a couple days prior to go over some of this stuff so he knew what he was dealing (he didn't bother) and then when he arrived was moaning about this very thing. I told him he needs to get a cut a bit of timber to suit to bring the architrave flush with the wall... this "would have been too much work" and he'd need to buy extra timber and blah blah blah. He did it with one door and then did exactly what I didn't want him to do with the rest leaving them birdmouthing and needing loads of filler.

Taking off original door stops and replacing them was too much work, getting architraves mitred neatly was too much for him, chiselling out the door keep enough and putting the little black plastic cup in was too much effort, broke the lock mechanism from my nice new bathroom door set and replaced it with some cheap item from screwfix which is too tight for the kids to lock and unlock. Gaps between doors and frames start at 1mm at one side to 10mm at the other. No doors left enough space for carpets and drag on the floor, the kids bedroom simply didn't fit. He didn't fill his brad holes, didn't caulk any area that wasn't immediately visible... took offence when I told him to fill internal mitred corner which had a 2mm gap right down.

Literally hundreds of £££ of doors and trim flung on with no care. The above is just the tip of the iceberg.

Problem was I knew fine well that if I stopped him there and shown him the door it would take me weeks to get another joiner. Like I said, I'm not happy with how I handled the situation and the annoying thing is I feel a lot of it was my fault... I should have told him to pack up and leave the minute he cut those first two 45deg mitres, bought the tools myself and did it myself... it might have taken longer but I 100% reckon I'd have done a neater job. I'd have at least learned how to scribe a corner.


Anyway, live and learn... I have more than 50% of the house doors and trims still to do, I'll do that myself.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

... I should have told him to pack up and leave the minute he cut those first two 45deg mitres...

Yes, you should. His name wasn't Purpleroad, by any chance was it?

Joking aside, we have a broken training system in this country. I say that because I'm an old school C&G sort and the current CITB scheme (where they incidentally don't recognise C&G qualifications) delivers qualifications called NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) or "Not Very Qualifieds" as we call them. These are based on someone adjudicating the nominees' work, but the system is open to abuse and corruption (like assessors taking back handers), so to my mind an NVQ often isn't worth the paper it is written on.

I have grown weary of picking up stupid errors in work which should never have happened, of shoddy workmanship, and of botched jobs. If you do employ a carpenter and joiner in future might I suggest you pick someone over the age of 35 who can produce either C&G qualifications, or who can supply references. And watch his first efforts before letting him proceed

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Sorry for blowing a bit, but as a foreman/lead joiner I've seen a LOT of carp in recent years. There were always fly by nights around, but finding decent, hard working, competent joiners under the age of about 40 is getting harder all the time. We really don't see many

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

There was a difference in height between the newly skimmed plastered walls and the existing door linings, I had asked him to come out a couple days prior to go over some of this stuff so he knew what he was dealing (he didn't bother) and then when he arrived was moaning about this very thing. I told him he needs to get a cut a bit of timber to suit to bring the architrave flush with the wall... this "would have been too much work" and he'd need to buy extra timber and blah blah blah. He did it with one door and then did exactly what I didn't want him to do with the rest leaving them birdmouthing and needing loads of filler.

Obviously not a tradesman then!

I did my architraves, plaster coving and last year new internal doors all round. I had never fitted doors before, so spent weeks reading up on how to fit them - as I always do when tackling anything new. The outcome wasn't absolutely perfect, but it was certainly better than I could expect by employing someone - a couple of weeks and the slight defects are forgotten about, because they are unnoticeable. I never set myself a completion target, such jobs are finished when they are done and I am satisfied with them. First door took a day, two doors the second and the rest at three per day, as my confidence increased.

For the first time a few weeks ago, I took my preserved car in to a garage for some remedial work - rust proofing to the rear arms and front and rear brake pipes replacing, just the exposed last few inches. I would normally do these things myself, but age is creeping up on me and I was recovering from an op. anyway. Car was returned and it was another week before I was fit enough to inspect the work. The easy underside of the rear arms had been treated, nothing done to the upper surfaces at all, backs of alloy wheels covered in over spray, so they had sprayed the arms with the wheels still on. Only the rear pipes had been done, front untouched and the had somehow managed to scrap 18 inches of the underside of the car down to bare metal. They had said they would need two days to complete the work, I said keep it as long as you like, they kept it a week, yet still didn't get it right.

It goes back to be done properly in a few weeks and their damage repaired. I had made it obvious that I was no mug, they saw the tackle I had at home when they collected it. Did they perhaps think I would not bother checking the work?

 

[albaPhenom]

Yes, you should. His name wasn't Purpleroad, by any chance was it?

Joking aside, we have a broken training system in this country. I say that because I'm an old school C&G sort and the current CITB scheme (where they incidentally don't recognise C&G qualifications) delivers qualifications called NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) or "Not Very Qualifieds" as we call them. These are based on someone adjudicating the nominees' work, but the system is open to abuse and corruption (like assessors taking back handers), so to my mind an NVQ often isn't worth the paper it is written on.

I have grown weary of picking up stupid errors in work which should never have happened, of shoddy workmanship, and of botched jobs. If you do employ a carpenter and joiner in future night I suggest you pick someone over the age of 35 who can produce either C&G qualifications, or who can supply references. And watch his first efforts before ketting him proceed

I completely agree with all of this.

The system is broken, I've heard Robin Clevett off YouTube talk about how his C&G wouldn't be accepted these days. In our office we had 3 young Site Managers who did some NVQ at work, it took them about an hour to pull together all the stuff they'd need to show (well the first one, the other two just copied his stuff), the assessor turned up, had 30 mins reviewing the stuff and passed them all. Despite it being the same assessor who would clearly see that they were all cope pastes of each other.

They then have some new piece of paper for whatever to show and had learned absolutely nothing or had improved any for it.

There are armies of young men out there with no qualifications or prospects that with a bit of good guidance and tutelage could become self-reliant excellent tradesmen earning good money.

Not to blow smoke up your arse but with you specifically, in the short time I've been on the site it's always been clear as day that you know your stuff and are good at what you do. Any reply is sure to be the right advice.

I usually count myself as a good judge based on a conversation and my gut feeling, so when this guy came to look at the job I always had this niggling feeling about him based on a couple things he said but he was available in a couple weeks as opposed to a couple months, his reviews on Checkatrade were all good, he gave rates for his work and spoke about big contractors he had worked with... seemed to have at least 10 yrs experience. I should have gone with my gut but it was the first in a series of errors on my part tbh.

The worst of it is I think he's capable of good work, he just doesn't give enough of a sh*t to have pride in his work... I don't want to moan too much about the guy because I could go on and on.

 

[albaPhenom]

Obviously not a tradesman then!

I did my architraves, plaster coving and last year new internal doors all round. I had never fitted doors before, so spent weeks reading up on how to fit them - as I always do when tackling anything new. The outcome wasn't absolutely perfect, but it was certainly better than I could expect by employing someone - a couple of weeks and the slight defects are forgotten about, because they are unnoticeable. I never set myself a completion target, such jobs are finished when they are done and I am satisfied with them. First door took a day, two doors the second and the rest at three per day, as my confidence increased.

For the first time a few weeks ago, I took my preserved car in to a garage for some remedial work - rust proofing to the rear arms and front and rear brake pipes replacing, just the exposed last few inches. I would normally do these things myself, but age is creeping up on me and I was recovering from an op. anyway. Car was returned and it was another week before I was fit enough to inspect the work. The easy underside of the rear arms had been treated, nothing done to the upper surfaces at all, backs of alloy wheels covered in over spray, so they had sprayed the arms with the wheels still on. Only the rear pipes had been done, front untouched and the had somehow managed to scrap 18 inches of the underside of the car down to bare metal. They had said they would need two days to complete the work, I said keep it as long as you like, they kept it a week, yet still didn't get it right.

It goes back to be done properly in a few weeks and their damage repaired. I had made it obvious that I was no mug, they saw the tackle I had at home when they collected it. Did they perhaps think I would not bother checking the work?

Probably kept a week and did it in a day.

It drives you mad, right?

You pay good money to get it done right and stuff gets half-arsed because it would have taken them an extra or hour or two to do it right... now you need to live with it for years because it saved them an hour. I suppose that's why we're all on this site in that we will tend to have this mentality of doing things ourselves or right.

I half suspect this guy did the work he did because I said I wanted a good finish and was looking closely at things cos some stuff just looks like it could only be done out of spite.