How to fit a front door into an odd-sized rough opening
Standard pre-hung doors rarely match non-standard rough openings, forcing a choice between an expensive custom door or dealing with awkward gaps and shimming issues. Trying to force a standard size leaves builders to fill large spaces by hand or pay hundreds extra for custom dimensions.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Consulting contractor friends for advice on tight fits
- 2Considering a smaller 10-inch sidelight to fit the opening with extra space
- 3Ordering a more expensive custom-sized door
- 4Installing a standard-sized door and adding a custom-cut wood header piece or trim strip to fill the gap at the top
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Im agonizing over what size front door to get. We currently have a 36 inch front door with one 12 inch sidelight. The width of my rough opening is a bit odd sized at 50 and 1/4 inches.”source ↗
“Sounds like my rough opening is too small but some contractor friends said it may be a tight fit but they always recommend extra room.”source ↗
“Will have plenty of room, but then I worry about having way too much space making it harder to shim because there is so much extra space. Also not sure if a 10 inch sidelight will look weird.”source ↗
“Just had my front door measured for a new storm door and it is 1 inch taller than the standard door (81in vs 80in), so we would have to get a custom door which is $450 more than the standard.”source ↗
“I’m just wondering if there if we could just order the standard 80in door and fill the gap and how we would go about that?”source ↗