# Forum Home Renovation Doors, Windows, Architraves & Skirts  Clearance between door and floor

## notrot

Hello all,
Well the renovations are continuing, amd I'm not sure they will ever finish, at the moment I'm having a bit of discussion with the builder regarding the clearance between the floor and the some internal French doors.
We are installing a pair of french door between two rooms and I'm not sure where the error happened but the end result was that the doors were way to high off the ground. After adding a 10mm strip of timber to the top of the jamb, and therefore effectively lowering the doors, I believe they are still too high.  I can get my fingers under the door. ( close to 15 mm) 
I believe the clearence should be no more than about 5 mm, what do others think. 
Thansk in advance 
Paul

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## Skew ChiDAMN!!

15mm _after_ dropping it 10mm?  Wow!  I thought I was the only one who stuffed up that badly.  I feel better now...   :Wink:  
Assuming the floors are uncarpetted, I tend to hang internals with 10mm clearance to allow for future carpeting (for the pedants: even then they often need some trimming but the less removed the better) but some clients want less. 5mm is the lowest I'd go though, otherwise they tend to catch junk on the floor and cause gouging.

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## notrot

I forgot to mention, the door has already been hung and other than having the whole jamb removed and repositioned the only neat easy way out I can see is to attach a strip to the bottom of the door. neatly nailed, glued sanded and painted it should be fine.
The builder has been very good and I just can't see my self saying remove it, seeing the gyprock and architraving is in etc.
Your views?  
Paul

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## notrot

[QUOTE=Skew ChiDAMN!!]15mm _after_ dropping it 10mm?  Wow!  I thought I was the only one who stuffed up that badly.  I feel better now...   :Wink:  
Yes it seems that the doors were probably intended as an external set of doors and should have had a wodden sill at the bottom,  but ofcourse when set internally they didn't have the wooden sill but they were not lowered to compensate for the lack of sill. 
GROAN 
Paul

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## Skew ChiDAMN!!

It seems you're already aware of what is probably the best & cheapest solution.   :Smilie:  
A little extra thickness at the bottom of a door is a good idea anyway. How was the top addition done? Nailed, glued & painted too? It'd be possible to add decorative trim along the bottoms of the doors to hide the joints, but it depends on whether it'd suit the doors you have. 
There's only two other options I can see: 
- repositioning the jambs; the architrave should cover the gap to the gyprock (unless it's extraordinarily thin arc) but then you'd need to repaint the walls as well as touching up the arc's. 
- dropping the door 10mm on the hinges and "building up" the inside top of the jambs with suitably sized timbers. Unless this was done tastefully it'd look terrible and then you have the problems of patching up the old hinge mortises... 
I'm assuming, of course, that the builder wasn't responsible and hasn't offered to fix it gratis out of a feeling of "moral & ethical obligation."  :Rolleyes:

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