Julian Cassell's DIY Blog

Door surrounds were traditionally made from plaster, and offer a more decorative or ornate option to wooden architrave. You can still buy traditional plaster surrounds or you can choose the modern, more lightweight alternatives – as shown below. Door surrounds are normally supplied in kit form, which you then cut to fit your door/entrance size.

	1. Because door surround kits normally use corner blocks, this means there is no need to do mitred cuts like those required to join wooden architrave around a doorway. Instead, you simply need to trim the two upright sections with straight cuts. A mitre block is still useful for ensuring a dead straight cut.
	2. Most kits will recommend the use of a tubed adhesive as shown here. This is applied, using a cartridge gun, along the back of the kit components.
	3. First, position the uprights, leaving a 5-10mm gap from the edge of the door lining to the edge of the surround.
	4. Fit the top section before finally sticking the corner blocks in place. Depending on your kit design, blocks may be needed at the base of each architrave section. If so, fit these blocks before the uprights.

Door surround tips

• It may be necessary to support the kit components whilst the adhesive dries. This can be done by simply knocking in some nails to hold the pieces in place. For example, inserting 2 or 3 nails under the bottom edge of the top section will support its weight. Remember only to tap nails in a few millimetres so that they may be easily removed when the adhesive has dried.
• The adhesive may be used to fill any small holes or blemishes in the kit components (if manufacturer suggests this is suitable). Alternatively, an all purpose filler can be used. For any cracks at the joints with the wall, or between sections, a flexible filler would be the best option. For more information about fillers, see my guide – ‘Decorating fillers’.

Tags: door, plaster

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 18th, 2010 at 8:08 pm and is filed under 'How-to' Guides, Mouldings, Skirtings, and Architraves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.