When purchasing a new door, the buyer receives a far from finished design for installation. She has no places for installing hinges, locks are not embedded. The inevitable question arises for the buyer - how to assemble the door frame.
You can use the services of professionals or mount the structure yourself. To do this, you need to prepare tools and study the features of the technology.
Doors on the market are sold mainly complete with a box, but sometimes they need to be matched to each other.
For the most part, new doors don't fit in old boxes either in size or style. In this regard, it is required to completely change the previous design.
Choice of door frame material
Now the market is dominated by products with a spectacular appearance and a small price, for example, from MDF - a composite of pressed fibers.
How to assemble an MDF door frame so that it lasts no worse than a wooden structure?The advantages of the new material are many, but here it is important to dwell on the shortcomings. Despite the great strength, the box can be deformed if the door leaf is heavy. In addition, in a humid environment, MDF panels can peel off and also swell, leading to a violation of the geometry of the opening.
Despite their shortcomings, affordable cost, good mechanical properties and a wide range of MDF parts make them a priority even when completing premium doors.
Required tools
Before assembling the door frame, you should first prepare the tools:
- hammer;
- set of chisels;
- knife;
- roulette;
- angle;
- hacksaw or fine teeth;
- plumb line;
- dowels, self-tapping screws, hinges;
- miter box - a tool for cutting at certain angles;
- screwdrivers.
Work is greatly facilitated by the presence of a power tool: a screwdriver, electric jigsaw, electric drill, puncher, milling cutter.
Preparing the doorway
It is important to choose the right door for the width of the opening, so that later there is less work on fitting. The minimum clearance must be at least 15 mm on each side.
Before installation, the evenness of the opening is checked. It is measured in several places vertically and horizontally.
How to assemble the door frame of an interior door if the opening is too large? To do this, strips of the required width are stuffed around the perimeter or the space is laid with bricks.
Other options are glazing the opening, making the frame out of wood or metal and plasterboarding it.
Component parts of the door frame
The box is made of timber and consists of fragments:
- loop bar and porch;
- lintel (top bar);
- threshold.
Thus, in order to assemble the door frame (it is equipped with a threshold only for a heavy canvas, which is mainly used at the entrance to the apartment), you need to correctly connect its components.
Thresholds are rarely set for interior doors.
Methods of assembling the door frame
Assembly is done with extreme care so as not to damage the decorative coatings. Even one minor chip or scratch spoils the appearance of the structure.
Hinges are required to install doors in a box. In interior designs, two are enough, and a third is often installed for the entrance.
The main difficulty in assembling the box is the correct execution of cuts and the connection of the horizontal beam with the vertical ones. Their profiled structure creates difficulties for beginners. The installer must fit all elements exactly to size. Before assembling the door frame, you should choose the installation technology. The beam is attached in several ways.
Spike connection
The most durable and reliable, but the most difficult is the spike connection. To do this, at the junction of the bars,grooves and ridges are made according to their thickness. Here you need a manual milling cutter and the ability to use it. The connection is made without fasteners, but many craftsmen make additional reinforcement with galvanized nails.
It is not so important on which part to make a groove or tenon. Either way, a hard connection is provided.
The milling cutter is a tool for professionals and it is not advisable to purchase it to install even several doors. When we assemble the door frame with our own hands, the most affordable way is to dock at an angle of 450 or 900.
Even a beginner can do a right angle assembly if he performs all the operations correctly.
How to assemble an interior door frame with docking 450
Cuts are made at the junction of the horizontal and vertical beams. Preliminary measurements are made several times so as not to make mistakes in the calculations. It is especially necessary to accurately adjust the horizontal beam in order to correctly select a gap of 3-4 mm and the width of the door. Racks can later be sawn off from the bottom after assembling the box, since they are made with a margin in length. After cutting, the surfaces to be joined are leveled with a chisel.
The beam is usually fastened with self-tapping screws, at an angle of 450. To prevent the wood from splitting, holes are made under them with a drill, the diameter of which should be smaller than that of the core of the self-tapping screw. The drilling depth is made less than the length of the fastener, so that the connection is reliable. For one jointRequires two screws on one side. You can add another one in the middle, on the other side of the corner.
How to assemble a door frame with docking 900
The assembly method is best for beginners. First of all, the door leaf is measured for compliance with a rectangular shape. It is often observed that one of the sides is slightly different in size from the other. This deviation must be taken into account when sawing racks. The cuts from the ends of the timber are also checked, which must be strictly at an angle of 900. Workpieces may leave the factory with uneven cuts.
The connection of the horizontal bar with the vertical ones is also made with self-tapping screws.
Checking for correct connections
Checking is done by placing the box on a flat horizontal surface and putting a door leaf on top of it. If it enters with a slight gap, then the assembly is correct.
The lower ends of the racks are filed, as they must rest against the floor. The horizontalness of the floor covering in the doorway is preliminarily checked. Deviations should be taken into account when sawing off racks.
Important! The blanks are cut from the side of the veneer to prevent its peeling.
Installing hinges
Before you install the door, you need to choose the side where it will open. Depending on this, loops of a certain type are selected - right or left. The fabric for fastening the loops is chosen more massive, without defects and cracks. Place of installationmarked at a distance of 15-25 cm from the door end. The canopies are divided into a large part for the box and a small part for the door leaf. Then the loop is applied to the end of the door and outlined with a pencil, and then with a knife. Do the same on the box. At the same time, the door leaf is attached to the box and the coincidence of the marks under the hinges is checked.
The edges of the door leaf and hinges are combined, avoiding distortions. The hinges must face the direction the door opens. When marking, it is unacceptable to confuse the top and bottom of the door. It depends on how it will be installed after fixing the loops. If the door has glass, their location should also be considered.
Using a chisel and a hammer, a place is cut out for the hinges to a depth of 3-5 mm so that they enter flush with the wooden surface. Seats for fittings are made with special care and precision. Then the loops are applied, the screws are marked and screwed. The marks must match the centers of the holes so as not to split the wood when screwing in the fasteners. To prevent the loops from being tightened with self-tapping screws, the pencil marks are additionally marked with an awl.
With the help of applying a ruler, the correct fit of the loop is checked. When protruding, the platform under it deepens, but not more than the required level. If the hinges are installed correctly, the leaves should open 1800. The load on the door must not exceed the specified one. Usually it is 50 kg.
Installing the box in the doorway
At the moments describing how to properly assemble the door frame, the work is notends. It still needs to be installed so that the door opens and closes well. To do this, the box is carefully placed in the opening and temporarily secured with pieces of packing cardboard or foam. The verticality of the loop bar is checked by level. Then wooden wedges are cut.
They are installed under the hinges. In the upper corners, these parts are also clogged. To prevent displacement of the box from opposite sides, two wedges are hammered with sharp parts overlapping each other. The positions of the sidewall and lintels are checked with a level, as displacements are possible during wedging. The box should be flush with the room wall. The wedges must not protrude.
Questions of how to assemble and install the door frame, as well as hanging the door leaf are solved together, since everything is a single structure.
The door frame is attached to the wall with dowels in the places where the hinges fit. There are also wedges to prevent deformation of the timber. The fake side has not yet been exposed.
For greater stability of the exposed elements of the box, they need to be partially foamed. Surfaces are pre-cleaned and wetted with water, which increases the adhesion of the foam by an order of magnitude.
Hinges are attached to the door leaf, after which it is installed on the lining in the doorway. Then the door hinges are attached to the box beam: first from above, then from below.
The door closes and the porch is exposed with the help of wedges. When all gaps are set, you shouldfoam the box around the perimeter. At the same time, it is recommended to install spacers in it to prevent swelling of parts.
Conclusion
If you have the necessary tools, you can install the doors yourself. For this, the most important thing is to figure out how to assemble the door frame. If you correctly and consistently perform all the installation operations, everything will work out.
