How to Trim a Door

hello I'm Travis Larson and I'm an editor for Family Handyman magazine today I'm going to tell you how to the six panel door with this extra wide fit Princeton casing it'll look like a million bucks when we're done you can do it too it's a lot easier than you think once you get used to it you can trim the door like this one side at least in about ten minutes there's only a few tools that you need the most important one is an 18 gauge trim gun this shoots little Brad's ranging from once one inch to two inches and we're going to use one-inch Brad's for attaching it to the door jamb and the two inch longer Brad's for attaching a thick part of the trim through the drywall into the framing so let's get started the first thing that we're gonna do is cut off the shims with these really thick shims you should score it on both sides really pretty deep make sure you got a nice sharp blade and cut it on this side a couple passes just snap it off after you snap them off make sure they're not projecting past the door otherwise the trim is going to rock on there and you'll never get it flush on one side or the other so we're gonna start by putting the top piece of trim on but before we do that we have to establish where the short points of that trim are gonna go you can only get so close because of the hinges so I always use that to define the reveal or the margin those are two terms that define the distance between the edge of the jamb and the edge of the trim that gives you a lot of wiggle room when you're putting the trim on and you can be a little bit off and still gonna look great a lot of amateurs make the mistake of trying to put the trim flush which is almost impossible and doesn't look good at all so here I go I'm gonna put my little line up here you saw me do that and that's about a quarter of an inch I'm gonna make the same mark over here and you can see that I've already pre-cut one side of this trim with a 45 degree angle so I'm not going to use a tape measure at all on this door I'm gonna do it all with scribing so I'm gonna hold the short point even with my first mark and then I'm gonna work my way down here and mark the short point of this mitre now I'm going to take this to the miter saw and sneak up on that mark and then this piece will be ready to nail in place so when you start cutting this mitre don't make the mistake a lot of people do we're trying to get it right off the bat just start a little bit away from it and keep dipping the blade moving the board this way until you until you get to your mark and then make the cut before I do any nail and I'm gonna make sure that I cut this the right length that's perfect so I don't need to recut anything now the next thing I'm gonna do is make sure that the margin between the top of the door jamb matches the margin at the short point of the miter and then I'm gonna take my 1-inch pins and blast this thing to the door there's one more tip about this and that is keep your pins away from the outside corners because this has a real big tendency to split if you get too close I try to stay at least an inch and a half away from those areas now that our two inch pins are in we're gonna nail the fat part into the framing now the top piece is done we're gonna start on the sides but just don't start cutting the long pieces of trim the first thing you need to do is to use a test piece and check your miter this is 45 this is 45 I'm gonna hold this up here and check my margins and then I'm gonna take a good hard look at my miter and it is open it's open on the toe of the miter so I'm gonna take a little bit off the heel which is about a half a degree or so I'm gonna set my saw at 45 and a half and I'm gonna check it again and if that's good I'm gonna cut that miter on my long piece for the side okay I made a 45 and a half degree cut on my test piece and yeah yeah this is perfect I'm gonna cut the real angle on the real piece of trim I cut a 45 and a half degree angle on this thing so I know the mitre is gonna be perfect but I can't really cut it to link just by measuring that's a big mistake if it was carpeting I could get away with that I would just pull him pull a tape measure out and cut it a quarter inch slower cuz the heart the carpet he's gonna hide the bottom but since this is a hardwood floor it has to it has to look really nice where it meets the floor so I'm just gonna flip it upside down and I'm gonna scribe the length and cut this part flat on the miter saw so I always take the pencil line because when you scribe something it's always gonna be too long so I just make sure I remove the line when I make this square cut check the fit now the length and the mitre one more time before I glue it nail it in place and it looks fabulous this is ready to glue and nail I'm going to squirt a little glue on the mitre and we're gonna nail this this board in place I like to nail them from both sides if you can get at it you can't always do that because sometimes there is a soffit or a wall right next to the gun so if you can only get one in here or one in here that's fine so now your corner together and then work your way down the jamb adjusting the margin as you go put your nails about every foot or so that'll hold it flying and after we do this we're gonna switch to two inch pins and nail the fat part to the framing the minute you get a piece up make sure that you'll wipe away the wet glue if you leave that stuff in there you're really gonna beat yourself up but chisels or whatever it takes to get that glue out but if you jump on it right away it not only cleans up real easy it also fills in all the little cracks that might be left over so it acts as wood filler and then when you go to paint this door it's gonna look like these two pieces of trim grew together perfect we did exactly the same thing on this side as we did on that side you can see this is in rocket science right so I'm gonna glue it up nail it in place well that's it the carpenter parts done now it's ready for paint if you're the guy that's painting instead of a professional it's going to be your job to fill all the nail holes and to put a thin bead of painters caulk around the perimeter and the inside edge where it meets the door jamb then when this thinks painted it's going to look like a million bucks you

Channel: Family Handyman

Views: 1,229,403

Rating: 4.7898631 out of 5

Keywords: the family handyman, handyman, handy, how to, diy, project, how, to, trim, door, carpentry, skill

Id: _ZoKDvHEiUY

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2017