Spent 6 hours trying to fix a simple door frame gap in my own house

I built a new closet door frame last weekend and the gap at the top was like 3/8 inch on one side. I kept thinking I mismeasured the header or the jamb was wrong, so I pulled it apart twice and recut everything. Turned out the floor was just uneven and I needed to shim it more carefully. Has anyone else wasted a whole day on something they thought was a big mistake but was really just a shim issue?

2 comments

2 Comments

hall.nora1mo agoMost Upvoted

Level the floor first next time, trust me it saves the headache.

paulw631mo ago

Ha, funny you say that @hall.nora, but I've actually had better luck using a self-leveling compound after the fact... saves me from tearing up the whole subfloor when it's already got wiring running through it. Sure, it takes a day to cure, but it beats rebuilding the frame from scratch if the joists are slightly off. Maybe it's a lazy man's trick, but it's worked on three jobs now without a squeak.