32-1/2 inches.The rough framing should be 2-1/2 inches wider than the door itself. That leaves room for the 3/4 inch finish frame on each side of the door, and then 1/2 inch on each side for the shims between the finish frame and the rough frame.There are some tricks for building frames into new ...
Kevin from frosty Regina, Saskatchewan writes: "I had a new steel door installed this summer. When the temperature outside drops below -15 c, frost develops on the bottom of the interior casing. Is this due to a lack of insulation behind the casing? Also the bottom of the exterior threshold a...
Dan from Winnipeg, Manitoba writes: "What would be the best weather stripping to use for the wooden storm doors on my house? Front and Back."Wooden storm doors tend to warp a bit with changes in the weather and with any direct sunlight on them, so you will probably find that the south facing doo...
Debbie from North Bay, Ontario has electric heaters sunk right into her floor. Very few people even know that these things exist, but if you have a baseboard heated house you know how hard it is to get heat in front of a patio door or some other place that needs heat but there seems no way to ge...
Dave in London, Ontario has a bathroom door that won't stay open. The frame is probably not vertical, or somebody hung the door non-vertical, so you will have to play with the hinges to get gravity working on your side. Always tighten the hings screws as a first task -- maybe they are in the rig...
Although we tend to associate the term accessibility with wheelchairs, in reality it is much larger than that. Accessibility can relate to people who are extremely short or extremely tall, to very young people or very old people who have trouble holding on to things, or seeing things -- anyone w...
Accessibility is all about ease of movement about the house -- for wheelchairs, for walkers, even for people who simply have less mobility or less finger and hand dexterity.Sliding pocket doors are much easier to maneuver around than swinging doors. In this installation, an extra wide door was c...
When you cut out strike plate or hinge mortises with a router, you end up with round corners that often need to be squared off. The gadget in the photo has a right angle blade and a guide that you just slide into the round corner, hit the top with a hammer and the corner is perfectly square ever...
Loretta from Nova Scotia inquired of Jon how to straighten her sun porch doors and windows. Erosion from street run-off has undermined the corner of her concrete slab-on-grade porch, dropping that corner of the sun porch. The problem is now solved, but the openings are out of line.The frame o...
Sliding windows and sliding doors are prone to intrusion. There is now a wide variety of hardware to solve this problem. Hockey sticks are a good first line of defense, but there are things that are much better and more discrete.Most important is probably the spacer wedges that can be placed...
