For large profiles it's quite common to us 2 or more pieces,cheaper also.

Klem,

What I think happen is when they originally put the siding around the door (it's sheet goods, think T1-11) they didn't do a very good job and the gaps were larger than they should have been. As a result, the brickmould was held back quite a bit and then shimmed about 1/2" on each side when the storm door was hung.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with just repeating that...it certainly would be cheaper and I saved the old shim stock.

The term "shim" lead's me to believe the result wasn't attractive or maybe even unprofessional looking. That doesn't have to be the case. If the home's trim has a lot of decorative features,this is what I would do. Chose a molding that match's plus "shim stock" to fill the void (shim stock can be cut and planed to precise width and thickness). Routering one edge will transform "shim"to "millwork"that blend's right in with rest of trim. In any event if two pieces are used,to better blend parts,I would apply caulk between edge of "sandwich"when last piece is nailed in place rather than caulking later. Hopefully Millwork Man, HandyMac or others will come by with suggestions that don't require custom milling. There's ways of doing it that don't look second best.

Got a router? ;-)

Good point uncle Bob. That's why I was hopeing someone had a way of doing it without one. On the other hand this could be the perfect opportunity for Mike to convince his wife he need's to buy another power tool. ^_^.

The door that was replaced is about 60 years old with a thicker frame than modern doors. Near as I can tell, the brickmould was placed in such a way that they were 37" apart. So a pair of 1/2" "shims" were added on each side to reduce the opening to 36" in order to hang the storm door. Although these were a little thick, shims are a common way to adjust the opening to hang storm doors and are covered by the frame so they don't necessarily need to be that pretty.

As I had said, I thought about re-using the shims but with the slightly thinner frame of the new door 2" brickmould would end up very close to the edge of the door frame, not giving me much nailing surface. That wouldn't have been such a big deal if I was just trimming the door but I want something reasonably solid to hang the storm door from.

At one point I owned a fairly complete set of woodworking tools and space to work in. While I still have a router, I really don't have the tools to accurately dimension stock. Storm doors typically need a 1x1" bearing surface for the frame so I'd need to start with 5/4 or even 6/4 stock and mill it down to the 1 1/8" thickness of brickmould. That I can't do any more, at least not without investing in a bunch of tools...

As impractical as they might sound,those are the only ideas I have to offer. If I had the luxury of seeing the tools you do have I'm pretty sure a solution could be tailored to them. Maybe the wood filler crowd will chime in,they usually do when project parts don't fit togeather.

glue 1/4"lattice to the outer edge with 5-minute epoxy?