10x12 Gable Shed — 222 Gibson St SE · Plans p.24, p.32, p.45 (Appendix B) · Phase 5 · The decision, the salvage-yard card, and the build spec.
| Dimension | Status | |
|---|---|---|
| Rough opening, width | 62½″ | Door posts set — inner faces at 28¾″ / 91¼″ on a wall that measured exactly 120″ |
| Rough opening, height | 73″ (73¼″ to the header underside) | Fixed. 74″ plate underside less the ¾″ flat 1x4 header |
| Header | 1x4 pine, ¾″, flat, tight under the plate | Not yet installed |
The width is still negotiable; the height never will be. The header isn’t in, so the door posts can still move if something compelling turns up at a different width. The plate at 74″ is the ceiling for the life of the building.
| For | Against |
|---|---|
| The height problem vanishes. You build to your opening instead of hunting for one that matches it | A door is the hardest thing in this project. It hangs from three points, sees weather on one face only, and has to stay flat and square doing it |
| Plank doors belong on this building. A salvage panel door from a house can read as grafted on | Sag is the classic failure and it is a one-way mistake — see the brace rule below |
| You choose the lite. Cut the opening to whatever sash you find, or leave it solid | Seasonal movement across the width. Detail for it or the door binds in July |
| Lighter — 25–35 lb against 40–60 for an old solid door. Matters for hinges, for sag, and for hanging alone | Time — realistically a weekend, plausibly two |
| No hidden rot, no lead paint | Two identical leaves is harder than one — though the plans deliberately make them unequal, which helps |
| Repairable forever — you have the offcuts and you know how it went together | Needs a flat assembly surface and clamps |
| For | Against |
|---|---|
| Flat, square and stable — it did its moving decades ago | The height. Standard is 80″, the opening is 73″ |
| Fast — hang and go | You cannot cut the difference. See below |
| Character, when it is the right door | A matched pair at that height is dramatically rarer than one |
| May arrive with glass and hardware | Old solid doors are heavy and you are hanging them alone |
| Salvage prices can beat the cost of lumber | Rot at the bottom rail is where old exterior doors die, and it is the hardest part to repair |
| Lead paint on anything pre-1978 — matters the moment you sand | |
| Interior-grade doors delaminate outdoors |
How much can actually come off a door. On a stile-and-rail door: about ¾″–1″ off the bottom, 2″ with care, and ½″–¾″ per stile in width. Past that you cut into the panel groove and the door comes apart.
Taking 7″ off an 80″ door means dismantling it and rebuilding its bottom — which is more work than building a door from scratch. Treat “cut it down” as unavailable.
Build them. The 73″ ceiling means salvage is the only source, short matched pairs are rare, and trimming to fit is off the table — you would be searching a narrow market for months with no guarantee. Against that: a table saw, four right-angle clamps, months of runway, a plans page for the design, and no deadline. The one real risk is sag, and that is a single detail you get right by pointing the brace the correct way.
Keep looking on salvage trips anyway. A short matched pair is worth reconsidering for. Just don’t plan around finding one.
No — and the hardware assumption behind that question doesn’t survive contact with a double door.
How well a door closes is a function of the jamb being plumb, square and consistently spaced. A flat door helps, but a flat door in a bad jamb still binds.
More to the point: a pair of doors doesn’t take a knob-and-latchset. The active leaf has nothing to latch into except the inactive leaf. The plans use exactly what shed double doors actually use — a latch, a foot bolt and a chain bolt (p.32), with a 1x3 mullion strip lapping the meeting gap. A pre-bored knob hole in a salvage door is more likely a hole you have to fill than a feature.
Roughly a wash. Weight favors building (25–35 lb vs 40–60). Flatness favors buying. Hinge mortises favor building — fresh cuts beat filling and recutting someone else’s. Neither is decisive.
Yes — the cedar jamb is already in the Order 3 trim package, alongside the corner boards and casing, and the doors hang from it either way. It gives the hinges a flat plumb surface, takes the shims that let the door be plumb independently of the framing, and covers the rough edges.
Correcting myself: I earlier gave leaf widths of “about 30″ each.” Don’t compute leaf widths now. Two reasons: the plans make the leaves deliberately unequal, and p.45’s finish rule is measured off the real opening, not the drawing. The correct method is below and it makes the arithmetic moot.
“Combined widths 2 wider and 3 longer… finish cut 5/8 less than the opening.” Build oversize, then cut true to the measured opening. Same wild-then-trim philosophy as the siding, applied to a door — it cannot come out wrong if you measure the real opening. Write the as-built RO on the door post the day you frame it (p.24).
| Spec | |
|---|---|
| Thickness | 1½″, built from store ¾″ stock — ¾″ vertical boards plus ¾″ battens and diagonal. The plans build 2″ from true 1″ stock; ours is the dimensional-lumber conversion. |
| Leaves | Deliberately unequal — a primary and a secondary. The secondary takes the foot and pull latches and stays shut; the primary carries the 1x3 mullion strip that laps the meeting gap. That mullion is the weatherstop between leaves. |
| Handedness | Put the primary on the side you’ll approach with full hands. Decide this before you build, not after. |
| Lite | Fixed sash per leaf: top batten held high, diagonal kept low to clear it, cutout = sash + ⅛″, 1x3 interior ring glued and screwed, sloped drip-kerf sill stop |
The diagonal runs from the BOTTOM of the HINGE side UP to the TOP of the LATCH side. Its low end is at the hinges.
Why, so you can’t get it backwards: when a door sags, the latch side drops and the door racks into a parallelogram. That shortens the bottom-hinge-to-top-latch diagonal and lengthens the other one. A wooden brace resists shortening beautifully — it just bears end to end, in compression. Resisting the lengthening diagonal would put the brace in tension, which means the whole load lands on fasteners in end grain, and they pull out.
Run it the wrong way and the door sags within a season. More people get this backwards than right.
Clamp a quarter of the way in from each end BEFORE any screws go in. Screws ¾–1″ from board edges so the boards can move seasonally without splitting. A door screwed up unclamped is a potato chip by August.
Prime all six faces the week they are built. Six — including both edges, the top and the bottom. An unsealed end grain edge is how a flat door stops being flat.
| Spec | |
|---|---|
| Hinges | T-hinges. Top hinge down 12″, bottom hinge up 14″ — asymmetric on purpose |
| Why asymmetric | A door sags away from its top hinge toward the bottom latch corner. The offset pattern biases the hinges toward that loaded diagonal. Keep the plans’ numbers. |
| Stops | Installed with the door closed — scribed to the actual door, not measured to a drawing |
| Latching | Latch + foot bolt + chain bolt. No knobset. |
| Chain bolt gotcha | Reverse the bolt’s angle by opening the S-hook with pliers — do not bend the casting. Three-minute subtlety that saves a broken part and a hardware-store trip. |
| Timing | Hang after the roof is done. Sash stays boxed until Phase 5 — doubly binding with irreplaceable salvage glass. |
Three matching salvage sash bought Aug 2026 at $10 each. They are too wide for a ~30″ leaf, so the door lites are unresolved. Options, in order of how much they cost:
| Option | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Narrower sash for the doors | ~$10–65 each | Keep looking. p.32 says the flattest sash go to the wall (they have to open); warp-tolerant ones become the fixed door lites — so the door sash can be the lesser find |
| No lite — solid doors | $0 | Interior goes dark when the doors are shut. The vent and two west windows are the only other light |
| Widen the door opening | ~10″ of wall each side | A 30″-wide sash needs roughly a 36″ leaf, so a ~72″ RO instead of 62½″. Live while the header is out. Costs wall, gains access width |
Measure the three sash before deciding anything. If they are only a couple of inches too wide, option three is much cheaper than it sounds. If they are far over, options one or two.
Written to be read on a phone with a tape in hand.
Anything at or over 74″ tall is out. Target 68″–72½″. This disqualifies most of the yard in one measurement, so do it before you look at anything else.
Height, combined width, thickness, and a photo of the bottom rail. That is enough to say yes or no.
Budget check. The estimate carries $450 for doors. Shop-built runs roughly $150–250 in material plus $80–150 in hardware. Comfortably under either way.
Written Aug 22, 2026, after three matching salvage sash turned out to be too wide for the door leaves. Sources: plans p.24 (front wall & door framing), p.32 (hanging doors & windows), p.45 (Appendix B — making doors), with the Gibson St annotations. Two corrections against earlier chat guidance are recorded here: leaf widths should not be computed in advance (the leaves are unequal and the finish rule is measured off the real opening), and a bought door confers no closing or hardware advantage on a double-door opening. Related: Barn Sash Search, Build Guide Phase 5, Annotated Plans p.24 / p.32 / p.45.