The door to my shop has been in bad shape for years. It’s a wooden door, and due to way the roofline is, there is a significant “splatter” of water which ends up hitting the bottom. Over the years, the wood has rotted away to the point where it was close to falling apart at the bottom. Well, I’ve got wood and tools, so my thought was to repair the bottom of the door, instead of purchasing a new replacement.
So the process steps to repair the bottom of the door are:
- Use a circular saw and straight edge to cut out the bottom portion of the door. In this case, I had to cut out the bottom 3 inches
- Use a router with a 5/8” bit to cut out a groove the length of bottom of the door, in the good wood that remains. In this case, I had to setup a jig so that I could run the router on its side, rather than from the top. I cut in the groove to a little over ¾” deep. It was a challenge setting this right so that the groove was centered.
- Use the table saw to rip the replacement bottom. In this case, I ripped it down to 3-3/4”, then lowered the blade to help cut the tongue out that would fit into the groove. Again, had to work to get the tongue to be centered
- Used my shoulder plan to “dial in” the tongue thickness, so that it fit snuggly into the groove, while centered.
- After test fitting, glued the tongue in, using a mallet to tap it into place snuggly.
- After sanding it down and cleaning up the door, I taped off the glass and then put coat of primer over the entire door, so that it would stick well
- Finished it up with some coats of exterior semi-gloss white paint. Once dried, I mounted it back on the hinges, and tested it for swing & closing. Works great, and it’s a weekend well spent. Still need to pull the tape off the glass, as well as working on repairing some of the lower trim.
