Door - existing hinge position.

[Loki7430]

Hi,

I am hanging a door this weekend. A rather heavy exterior front door (as you may have seen from my previous post). Ideally I would like to keep the existing hinge position and not replace the frame for obvious reasons! Assuming I can align it, is this an acceptable thing to do? i.e re-use exisitng screw holes or will they be too far 'gone'.

Alternatively I can move the location of the hinge further down the door frame although I guess this will put them further down the frame than is ideal (hope this makes sense!).

Cheers

 

[Symptoms]

loki - use the old positions, drill out the old screw holes if they're too far gone, fill with glued wooden dowels. If the holes aren't too bad, again fill with glued wood slithers (the old matchstick trick) and longer screws. If you move the hinge position then you'll have to fill the old ones, and the only acceptable way of doing that is to 'let in' glued timber stips; this method can also be used when using the original positions which might be damaged. Tip ... if you use timber strips make them proud so when the glue has dried you can plane/pare/sand them level for an invisible repair.