I'm shopping around for some interior pre-hung 6-panel doors for my basement. A few of my rough openings, due to being framing beneath a bunch of pipes, have a rough-in height of 73.5" to the unfinished floor. This means that I'm going to have to trim possibly a solid 9" off a standard 80" pre-hung door. How far up from the bottom of the door does the first pane in a 6-pane door typically come?

While I'm here, does anyone have any good recommendations for where to buy pre-hung doors? I'm looking at some of the big-box stores online, and their reviews aren't the greatest. I get that reviews can be skewed due to the fact that people are more likely to leave reviews when they are ticked off. Have people generally had good luck buying from the big box stores?

 

If I intended to use prehungs I'd see about getting them custom built to fit your opening. 9" or so is a lot to cut off of the bottom of the door [you'd need to add a new strip of wood inside at the bottom] along with also having to cut the jamb/casing. The hinges would likely be too low if you cut them yourself.

 

Hollow core, pre hung doors are avaiable from cheap to decent, you get what you pay for.

The typ hollow core door has a frame around the door that is about 1" tall/wide, cut past that and there is nothing!

Our last house was messed up, the doors were set way to low and in a few applications due to carpet I had to trim the doors to the point they bottom frame was cut out.

It wasn't horrible to fix, just had to cut a filler piece of wood and glue in place!

9" is a lot, not only will the door have to be modified but the frame also. Might look odd having that bottom hinge just above the ground and you dont want to cut into the bottom of the panel indent!

 

I was considering doing what the guy in this video does, and just glue in a piece of MDF into the openings at the top and bottom of the door after trimming and then also trimming the jams as needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxBTd9_N8qg

At the end of the day I could just buy a slab and build the jam myself, but I was really hoping to avoid needing to mortice the hinges and cut the door knob handle out myself. I can handle trimming things down, but intricate work like that tends to be my bane.

 

You will be cutting off the entire bottom stile if you trim 9" off the bottom only. And it will look very odd. You would likely be better off if you cut the upper 2 panels off and make it a 4 panel door. Not totally sure of the measurements but you can check that out with a tape measure at the store. You would not want to buy a prehung if you go that route because you will need to mortise your own hinge locations. You can buy plain jamb stock and door stop or a jamb kit if it is not mortised.

Jigs and a trim router make hinge mortising easy. Just accurately mark your centers on both the door, jamb and jig.

 

Hi, Wow lots of problems. If you trim nine inches off the bottom, the door knob will be nine inches to low along with the blocking for the lock set. When I had to install a door under a stair well I always cut the top.My solution would be to install all flat doors and then to class them you could glue picture frames or fancy molding or panels on all the doors.