So I'm all about replacing the doors in our house, from the cheap hollow core doors to solid wood ones that we bought a while ago. And thinking it might be of some interest, I took some pictures.

Ok, so first what I did was rip the old one out. Now normally this would go a little quicker, but since I didn't want to ruin it I was careful to not damage it. I mean hell, it's a cheap door...but it still works and somebody might want it someday. First thing is run a razor blade along the trim so youd don't rip the paint off the wall. So after prying off the door trim I start to pry the jambs into the center, and then push them back so the nails poke through the wood putty enough so I can remove them on one side. Then I remove them, and I'm a big fan of the vise grip/pry bar method for this:

Ok, so in theory the old door is out. So what I do is clean up any left over nails, wrap up the old door, and stare in amazement at how crooked the wall it. Then I remember that there's no such thing as a straight wall in my house and move on.

Now to unpack the new door and install it. Sounds easy right? I've got a box of 8d nails and 2 packs of shims. Turns out I'll use most of them....this house is the devil. So I take the door off the jamb frame, and then put the frame in the rough door opening. Making sure to add a few shims on the bottom to take it off the pergo, and then I add a couple right above the first hinge and in the same place on the other side. Once I'm happy with the "centeredness" off the door in the rough I nail in the top hinge, middle and bottom hinge....then usually add some right at the very bottom to stop any bowing. One more tip, use a shim to protect the door stop strip while hammering....

Once the hinges are all secured, I put the door back on so I can align the strike plate jamb, you know to keep the distance uniform. Now I usually end up using like 5 different points at least, sometimes 6...whatever it takes to keep the thing level. If you take a look at some pics you'll really get an idea of how bad it can get sometimes.

a href="http://dennisjudd.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=house&id=IMGP3879">

That's pretty much it.....