Trim, Door and Cabinet Installation in Tampa, FL

A prehung door comes already hung in its own frame, hinges and all. It is the usual choice for a new opening, or when the old frame is damaged or out of square. A slab is just the door. It fits into the existing frame, which makes sense when the jamb is solid and you want to keep the casing.

A slab has to be cut to the old opening, and the hinge mortises and latch hole have to line up with the frame that is already there. Measuring the old door, not the opening, is the safest starting point.

A prehung door is set plumb and square in the rough opening with shims behind the hinges and the latch, not just at the corners. One long screw through the top hinge into the framing keeps the door from sagging over time.

The gap between the door and the frame, called the reveal, should be even all the way around, roughly an eighth of an inch. A door that is out of plumb will swing open or closed on its own. There should also be room under the door for the finished floor and for air to move between rooms.

Door casing is mitered at the top corners and held a small, even distance back from the edge of the jamb. Baseboard goes around the room with mitered outside corners and coped inside corners. A coped joint is cut to the profile of the board it meets, so it stays tight when the house moves, where a mitered inside corner tends to open up.

Walls and floors are rarely straight, especially on a slab with tile. Baseboard is scribed to follow the floor or caulked where small gaps remain, nailed into studs and the bottom plate, then filled, caulked and painted.

Crown molding sits at an angle between the wall and the ceiling, so its corners are cut with both a miter and a bevel. Inside corners are usually coped, like baseboard. Ceilings are rarely flat, so the top edge often needs caulk to close small gaps against the ceiling.

On long walls, the joints between pieces are scarf joints, cut at an angle and glued, so they do not open as a straight seam. Chair rail, picture frame molding and window casing follow the same rules: layout first, joints that close tight, nails into framing.

Before the first box goes in, the floor is checked for its high point, and a level line is drawn on the wall from there. Base cabinets are shimmed up to that line, never cut down to a low spot, so the countertop sits flat across the whole run.

Cabinets are screwed through their back rails into wall studs, not just into drywall. Neighboring boxes are clamped and screwed together at the face frames so the fronts line up. Filler strips close the gap where a cabinet meets an uneven wall, and the doors are adjusted at the hinges once everything is fastened, so the gaps between them are even.

Our photos include a kitchen with newly installed white shaker cabinets over a marble-look tile floor.

Installers differ on whether the uppers go in before or after the bases. Hanging the uppers first means there's no base cabinet in the way of the ladder. Either way, the uppers are hung from a level line, fastened into studs, and set at a height that leaves room for the backsplash and the range hood.

Countertops are measured only after the base cabinets are set and level. A stone fabricator templates the actual installed boxes, so any change after that point means a new template.

Trim and doors usually go in after the drywall is finished and primed, and before the final coat of paint. That way nail holes and caulk lines get painted with everything else. Cabinets go in after the walls are painted behind them, since that area is hard to reach once they are on.

When flooring is also changing, the floor normally goes down before baseboard, and door clearances are set for the new floor height.

Rafael, the owner, comes out to see the space with you and talks through what you want done. The quote comes in writing after that visit, and we follow up to answer questions. Interior door installation, trim and moldings and cabinet installation are on our list, along with the drywall and paint that usually come with them. We are licensed and insured. One of our project photos shows a new interior door with casing set in freshly finished drywall.