changing door swing

15 years ago

Someone on this forum mentioned that it was easy to change an in swing door to an out swing door. This was said in response to some question on the door swinging in and not having good use of space because of it. I can't find the particular thread that I remember. In any event, what I really want to know is how hard/easy this procedure will be. Will it involve filling the hinge screw holes with putty, changing the way the door jamb is constructed? I'm clueless about these types of issues and don't want to bring it up to the contractor unless I understand what may be involved. We are maybe 6 weeks away from getting our house finished and don't want to add something that may delay things but if it's easy I'd like to get it done. I just read the thread on opening a door and seeing a toilet and realized that that was what has been bothering me about this bathroom. If the door could be changed to open out the beautiful vanity and mirror would be the first thing to catch the eye. Thanks for the help.

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Comments (4)

toadangel
15 years ago
i did this for my master bath - it used to swing in and now swings out. the way i did it was
- remove trim around door
- cut nails fastening door frame to doorway studs
- remove door & frame and rotate it 180 degrees
- reattach to doorway studs
- reattach door trim

this only works if you want the door to swing out from the opposite side of the doorway.

if you want it to swing out from the same side, i don't actually know how complicated that gets. i had that issue with my interior garage door & we ended up replacing the door at $100 since my carpenter friend said it would be a rather time consuming project to mortise out hinges on the other side of the door frame, and hanging it correctly after that is challenging as well.
sweeby
15 years ago
Generally, it involves uninstalling the entire door, frame and all, rather than messing with the hinges. But it's not as bad as it sounds.

You can find good directions online --
palimpsest
15 years ago
I had this done for the very same reason, and it was relatively simple for the contractor to do, especially since the door trim was being replaced and had to be removed anyway. It was done as sweeby said, removing the entire jamb.
flseadog
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the advice. I took a quick look at on-line directions for doing this and have an additional question. Our door was not pre-hung and does not yet have any drill holes for the door knob and no strike plate as yet. Also, it will be taken down to put on the permanent hinges. Apparently the hinges on now are temporary until all the painting is done (I had never heard of this before). I've been hoping that all the contractor will have to do is move the door to the other side of the stop (is that the correct word for the piece of wood the door closes against?) when he changes out the hinges. Or, in the alternative, to just take the door down and change the position of the stop? DH says this was an expensive door so I don't want to do a whole new door. Also, we are at the point with the contractor that we are getting charged big time for every request that we make. Maybe I can learn to love looking at that toilet.