Let's see what's behind (fixing) door number 3

Awhile back I was living in a place where for some reason, for a year straight we had some really wild parties. Why a house full of three guys in their early 20s would live like that is beyond me. Always at the end of night for some reason or another one of the doors in the house would either end up with a massive hole in it or would be completely off the hinges. Now I don't always know how this happened, but I definitely know it was never my fault.

So being the person I am, I would be the roommate who would fix the doors. Now I went into this completely not knowing how to do it, and I messed up a good amount of doors getting it wrong. 

What you want to do first is get a door. Crazy right? Now the right size door is key, as one could imagine. What you can do is either measure the old door or the door frame. There aren't too many crazy custom sizes of doors. They all usually fall into a pre-cut category that you can find at a home improvement store. In addition you want to get a door with a pre-cut knob and latch hole. They usually aren't the easiest to cut and may be beyond the scope of this blog.

Now on to the worst part of this. Hanging the hinges on the new door. You have to cut an indention on the new door so that the hinge plate sits flush inside. This will allow the door to close completely on both sides and have as much seal as a piece of wood up against another piece of wood can have.

To do this you will need a wood chisel. I have this set from Lowe's. Once you have measured the proper distances the hinges need to be apart from each other an away from the top and the bottom of the door, take the hinge plate and place it against the door. Then trace around it to know exactly how it will set against it.

Now that you have your outline, take your wood chisel and make small cuts down about 1/8" apart

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from each other the entire length of your hinge outline. Note the depth of the hinge plate as well. You want to make sure it sits flush and doesn't go below the plane of the door. This will get things all messed up and you will have to put up those retro beads for privacy. Just remember, you can take more off if it doesn't fit, but you can't put more back on. Coincidentally that was also my catch phrase back in the 1974 disco scene.

Now that you have your mortise cut you can put the hinges on the door. You can really use any wood screw longer than an inch and a half to put the hinge on. In my first attempts I was notoriously bad at measuring. It's not the end of the world if it doesn't line up right. All you need to do is take it down and either cut further up or down on one of the hinges, and move it. It may look a little janky, but hey at least you have some privacy.