Help needed installing french doors

[Dan Mages]

I encountered one heck of a hack job in our new house. The past owner did not want the French doors in the dining room that led to the back porch. To remedy the situation, the hack decided to pull the door off its hinges, leave the door frame in place, put in a few studs to hold the exterior sheathing, shingled the outside and then build a false wall in front of the door to cover up the opening. I think it would have been much easier to pull out the door frame and do it right... but whats done is done.

To my question. I have a perfectly fine standard 60" door frame in place. I can procure doors from a local building materials reuse center for roughly the same cost as tearing it out, framing it in, and finishing it correctly. I can buy the doors with or without a frame. Am I asking for trouble by trying to make new doors fit the existing frame? Would it be easer to make the doors work in the old frame or trying to square up a new frame?

Thanks!!

Dan

[Neal Clayton]

the problem will lie in the hinges and the strike plate.

the odds of finding one with hinges and a lock that line up with the old door frame's hinges and strike plate may be slim or none.

if you find one that's close, you could re-mortise both for bigger hinges. if you find doors that are too big by a half inch or less you could trim the hinged side to fit, and cut the hinge mortises on the door again.

or if you want easy, just pull the casing and take a sawzall to the old door frame and replace the whole thing ;).

edit: nevermind i see you're talking about french doors. nix the strike plate, but the latch holes at the top and bottom will need to line up. that might be easier to pull off, but the hinge problem is the same.

[Jim O'Dell]

I'd think that the extra time to make the hinges line up, fit, work, doors the exact width, mortising for the special hardware for the one side, price of the hardware....I'd just get the whole thing and drop in place, plumb, secure insulate and trim. Much faster, probably a lot cheaper. Jim

[Ben Franz]

I second Jim's suggestion. If your time is at all valuable, you will be way ahead to buy a pre-hung unit. I've done finish carpentry for the last 20 years and even with a good hinge template jig I hate rehanging doors in existing jambs. If everything goes perfectly, you end up with an equivalent result to the new pre-hung approach. When was the last time everything went perfectly?? My $.02.

[Dan Mages]

Welp, I could not find a french door at the reuse yard, so a wall has been erected in the opening. I went a little easy on the nailing and such to allow it to be reversed in the future if we find one we like.

Dan