Drywall – How to properly frame/finish “trimless” interior doors

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I decided to try a couple of "trimless" interior doors in my add-on room, like this pic. No trim, no cut, line etc. Just smooth drywall up to the actual door opening.

It turned out pretty well, but the problem is that I'm not sure the proper way to do it. I just ripped the trim off some cheap standard interior pre-hung doors, installed the frames in the rough openings, and butted the drywall up to it, filling in with mud as needed to achieve the smooth edge.

The problem is, obviously, that some of them are cracking where the mud is very thin on the wood door frame, and doesn't stick to the wood very well. When the door gets slammed or slightly flexes the frame due to use, it creates cracks.

Can anyone enlighten me to the correct way to achieve this effect to prevent it from cracking?

Thanks!

Best Answer

If you look at the documentation for a commercial "trimless" door jamb kit you'll see that there's an integrated flange that creates a positive connection between the jamb and the wall. This mostly eliminates the kind of impact movement you've experienced.

The flange also acts as a taping bead, avoiding the interaction of joint compound and wood, which usually isn't a good combination.

You could probably retrofit a metal strip to serve the same purpose. Pre-formed steel found at a building supply store might work well to overlap and partially wrap the jamb. You could probably have a siding shop bend you some metal that perfectly fits your jambs. You'd then need to cut out for the hinge mortises.

Or, if your jambs are very securely fastened to the framing, and the framing is solid, try taping the joint properly with paper or fiberglass mesh. No joint should ever be finished with joint compound alone.

Related Solutions

Doors – How to install slab doors when the jamb has been drywalled over

Before you get started carefully evaluate if you really really want to have a pair of doors that swing out 18" into the room. In many bedrooms this is likely to be a less than desirable thing to have. If you are having a hard time visualizing what this would be like then you should get some large cardboard boxes and make up a fake set of the doors and duct tape them in place for a few days. Then with normal usage of the room you can swing the fake doors open and shut to see if the 18" interference is a pain or not.

Do not try to install the door hardware right on the top of the drywall. You will indeed regret doing that sooner as opposed to later.

The really correct way to do this is to remove the banding drywall material. (This will likely be more work than first guess because there is highly likely to be metal corner pieces installed on each corner of the opening). You would also remove the banding drywall at the upper side of the opening along with any previous door track hardware. Then you would fit in new boards to make a proper jamb for the doors. These will want to 3/4" thickness and not the 0.5" thickness that you proposed. Proper door fitting will demand that there be a small gap between the jamb and the exposed stud faces. The gap is used to allow the adjustment of the jamb opening so that it is perfectly square and plumb. Tapered wood wedges in the opening help to wedge the frame one way or another.

After the jamb is in place the trim is installed across the gap to bridge over the space from the jamb out over the drywall.

You should also plan for installing door stop molding which gives an edge for the doors to close against.

Door Comparison

I've added a couple of pictures to my answer to show the advantage of bi-fold doors in terms of how they project out into the room less than full swing doors. First off you would want to use a pair of bi-fold doors per opening for optimum usage. The second point is that the pivot point for bi-fold doors can often be recesed into the opening which lessens the projection distance into the room. The latter comment would also apply to a single bi-fold door application as well.

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I can appreciate the fact that bi-fold doors use up some of the opening width. For your most often used closets you may want to consider the possibility to widen the opening which of course is not a trivial project. But then what is the price of convenience.

Also closets with deep blind ends are indeed a pain to make use of. Often it can be advantageous to re-fit the closet pole in such closets so that they go across from the front to back of the space at the ends so it is easier to take hung garments in and out.

Doors – How to fix interior and exterior doors that do not close properly

In both cases there is no doubt that the structure around both walls and thus the corresponding floors and foundation are moving around. Besides the door top to frame fit another real visible proof shows by the opening of the trim miter joint on the bedroom door. The crack above the door frame corner of the same door shows this too.

If this has been a progressive problem that gets steadily worse despite shorter term better/worse behavior that follows the seasons then you will be eventually faced with having to do some serious repair of the building structure. An interesting question to ask is if these two doors are being affected by the same part of the building movement?

Bedroom Door

The shortest term fix for the bedroom door is to remove the door from its frame by pulling the hinge pins. Then lay the door down flat on some saw horses so you can easily work on it. The idea is to cut a wedge shaped amount off the top of the door starting at about 1/8 to 3/16 inch at the latch side of the door and going down to nothing at the hinge side. The best way to cut this is with a circular saw using a carbide tipped blade. To make the cut straight you need to clamp a guide board across the door in an appropriate position so that the base of the saw slides against the guide board and places the blade right at the cut line of the wedge shaped cut that needs to be made. Before you make the cut wrap the whole cut area all around the door with wide masking tape that sticks down good onto the door surface. This tape will help to minimize the surface chipping of the door paint as you cut. After the cut is completed you would remove the tape and guide board. Hit the top edges of the door with some sandpaper to slightly round the cut edges and then you would be ready to remount the door.

This fix for the bedroom door will just be temporary because if the house structure continues to move it may be necessary to make this cut again. In the more extreme case the door latch will start to be misaligned with the striker plate (much like you are seeing with the front door) and more serious work would have to be done. In the case that the building structure is restored back to its "as built" position it may then be necessary to replace the door with a new one because of the big crack that would appear above the door where it has been cut off.

Front Door

For the front door the pictures reveal that the door is likely a steel clad door. This type of door is more difficult to cut off because it takes different tools to cut the door if required. So far it seems as if there is still clearance at the top of the door to let the door open and close so cutting may not be necessary for now. A temporary fix for the deadbolt striker plate is to remove part of the wood at the top in the door frame hole. This can be done with a course round wood rasp tool using short strokes into the hole. (Another scheme may be to use a Dremel tool with a wood cutter bit to grind out the top side of the hole). Then you would enlarge the hole in the striker plate at the top side to allow the dead bolt to slide more freely. The Dremel tool with a metal grinding stone installed could be used for this operation after you have reinstalled the strike plate onto the door frame. This would allow iterative grinding and checking for dead bolt fit.

Note that if the house movement becomes more it will likely that deadbolt may start to bind even more again and eventually either the striker plate would have to be moved up on the door frame or the top of the door will start to bind against the frame just like the bedroom door. At this point much more serious work would have to be done on the front door and its frame. If the building movement is fixed and the original door fit is restored you may want to replace the ground out striker plate so that it looks better.

Long Term

In the long run if the building moves some more and then stops on its own or if you get some work done to stop the progression of the movement then it may be desirable to do some repairs of these doors to restore things to a proper installation instead of the short term hacks described above. For both doors this would involve removing the doors from the frames then removing the door trim pieces. The door frame itself would then be removed and reset so that it is square again. In some cases, based upon the types of material involved it may be more desirable to fully replace the door frame and/or trim instead of re-setting the old frame. Often the old doors can often be re-used if they are in decent shape and have not been wedge cut. Otherwise new doors would have to be installed into the reset frames which would involve cutting the new door to length and fitting the hinges and locksets accordingly.