Hope you all had a great Labor Day. We split time between family and home projects, which is our ideal way to spend a long weekend. This week is especially busy with book-related deadlines every day, but we managed to get the doors installed and wanted to share the full process for anyone tackling a similar DIY: how we built jambs, routed hinge and latch recesses, and hung two interior doors.
Before this, the laundry room had no door, which made working in there convenient but left the adjacent storage room closed off with an ugly plastic drop cloth. Installing doors immediately improved both function and appearance.
Doors are more intricate than they seem. Besides the hardware—hinges, doorknob, and strike plate—the finished opening consists of three trim elements: the casing, the jamb, and the stop molding. We planned to install all of them.
We considered buying a pre-hung door for the laundry room, which would have saved the trouble of cutting hinge and knob recesses, but matching styles and cost made building a jamb the right choice—especially since we were reusing an existing door. For the second opening we bought a jamb kit (Home Depot sells affordable kits for doors up to 36″ wide; ours were 32″). The kits come as three pre-cut pieces—two side jambs and a top head—with a rabbet joint already cut on one end to fit together neatly.
We assembled the jamb on the garage floor, propping the door on scrap wood so gravity helped hold things in place. After trimming the head piece to fit the framed opening, we measured the jamb-to-jamb width, accounting for the rabbet and leaving roughly 1/8″ clearance around the door so it swings freely.
We traced the hinge outlines onto the jamb using the hinges already mounted on the door as a guide. Instead of chiseling by hand, we used a compact router and the appropriate bit to mortise the hinge recesses. After practice cuts on scrap wood and creating a simple clamped guide for consistency, the routed hinge spots came out clean.
With the hinge mortises cut, we nailed the three jamb pieces together (2″ nails through the side into the head) and loosely set the assembled jamb into the framed opening. The fiddliest part is getting the jamb plumb and level all around; we used shims extensively—especially under the hinges—to fine-tune the fit before nailing the jamb permanently into the framing.
After screwing the hinges to the jamb, the door didn’t close perfectly at first. A top corner had slipped slightly out of plumb while we shifted attention to the bottom, so we added a couple more shims and rechecked levels. Once the door swung and latched cleanly, we installed the strike plate and nailed the stop molding around the jamb.
The result was satisfying, even though the process wasn’t fast. After finishing the backsplash and counters, we repeated the workflow for the second door—a heavier, 15-pane wood door wrapped in protective plastic. Because that door didn’t have hinges, we routed hinge mortises into both the door and the jamb. For the heavier door we used three hinges, and to speed things up we made a template from scrap wood so each routing cut would be consistent.
With the door mortised, the jamb assembled and shimmed, we installed the second door much faster and with fewer adjustments. It closed securely, stayed open when set, and looked great even before paint. We used a simple door lock installation kit to locate and drill the doorknob and latch holes; the guide and bits made the cross-boring straightforward. I still had to route a small recess for the latch on the door edge by hand, which was good enough for priming and painting later.
We added a short hardwood threshold where the flooring fell a bit short of the door, and although I wish I had extended the wood an inch farther to hide the tile edge, the threshold looks intentional and tidy. We’ll spray-paint all the trim and install casings when the rest of the room is finished. We also ordered matching door knobs with decorative back plates so the hallway will feel cohesive.
The practical payoff has been immediate: laundry is noticeably quieter with the door closed, and we no longer wrestle a plastic drop cloth to access the storage room. It’s gratifying to see this part of the project close to done—especially given that this space was drywall-free just a month ago. Progress can feel slow in the moment, but looking back it’s amazing how much changed in a short time. Just keep swimming.
