The question of how to install an interior door with your own hands, so that it works reliably and beautifully, cannot be approached with the thoughts "maybe it will work out" or "and it will do." Every detail matters, every nuance. Moreover, non-compliance with some of them often leads to dismantling and reinstallation. Naturally, this does not benefit either the doorway or the doors themselves. Therefore, it is necessary to try very hard to do everything efficiently and accurately the first time. Although, with a hand on the heart, few succeed. But "experience is the son of difficult mistakes," and current masters also began their journey with uncertain steps.
We will focus on the installation of swing interior doors, the most common in residential premises of apartments and houses. Their design is simple: the door leaf rotates around a vertical axis on hinges or brackets.
How to install an interior door? First of all, you will need to remove the old one from the hinges, dismantle its door frame and put in order the doorway in terms of vertical matching.
When unpacking the door frame kit, it is highly advisable not to touch the packaging of the door itself - this is its natural protection against careless movements and actions. So far, only the box itself is being assembled (in the form of a capital "P"). In this case, all geometric distortions and irregularities must be guaranteed to be eliminated. If they came from the clogging of plastic inserts, future fasteners, then before installing the interior door with your own hands, the door frame must be aligned with a hammer and a wooden plank, which will protect the surface of the parts from impacts. The lower part of the "letter P" should be fixed with a wooden plank.
After two measurements of the height of the doorway (one must take into account the height of the threshold), the door frame is adjusted under it by cutting the bottom with an
end saw. Only now, the still-packed door leaf is trying on the resulting design. Otherwise,
how to install the interior door with your own hands, if you are not convinced of the success of the assembly of all its elements?
There comes a very crucial moment: the
door frame construction is installed in the prepared opening
. Installation should be perfectly smooth, without the slightest distortion. For this, the process needs constant checking and double-checking with a plumb line and a building level for parallelism and perpendicularity with respect to the plane of the doorway. The finally mounted door frame is fixed with self-tapping screws in the plastic dowels inserted into the wall. But tightening the screws all the way is dangerous - the box may become deformed.
However, the doorway and door frame still look sloppy. The gap between them is filled with mounting foam. While it freezes, before installing the interior door with your own hands completely, it must be equipped with a lock, handles and hinges. The first item is adjusted very carefully, without any rush. Otherwise, in the end, you can get a broken lock and a damaged door. Again and again, it is checked that the mechanism works without jamming and delays, and most importantly - that it exactly matches the markings on the door leaf and on the body of the box.
By the time all work with the door is completed, the mounting foam completely freezes. The box is equipped with hinges, a niche is made in it for entering the language of the castle. Finale -
hanging the door leaf on the hinges. Only now can it be unpacked, and it will appear in all its splendor.
To really know how to properly install an interior door, you need to learn and practice, there is no other way. Achieved success will exceed your wildest expectations. And the time will come when the former student himself will become a teacher.