# Problems Making a Threshold



## jasoncarpentry (Feb 18, 2011)

I'm making a threshold for a 6-foot-long opening between two rooms in my daughter's house. The opening itself is about 3"-4" wide, and is filled w/ a mixture of 2×4's, 4×4's, old masonry, etc. In short, it's really ugly!

I bought an oak 1×8 and planed it down to 5/8" thick (which may have been my first mistake). Now it turns out that the vertical difference between the floors in the two rooms isn't constant along the entire 6 feet. Instead, it's 1/2" at one end and 7/8" at the other end.

My first thought is to cut one or more tapered pieces of oak and glue them onto the bottom of the long piece to fill the gap. I have a table saw, a tapering jig, and some scrap pieces of oak flooring.

To make matters more complicated, I want to cut a slight lengthwise chamfer (5-10 degrees) on each side of the threshold. All of the wooden thresholds I've seen have this feature. Any advice you folks can give would be greatly appreciated!


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## lateralus819 (Mar 24, 2013)

I just made two a few weeks ago using oak. I planed the chamfer/angle with a hand planed to eye. Don't know if you have one or not.

As for the discrepancy between the two, is it possible the flooring is loose at all? I had the same issue and it turns out a part of the floor wasn't nailed down tight.


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## davegutz (Oct 16, 2012)

The higher side doesn't need a chamfer and will look better without. When I connected a tile bathroom floor to red oak hallway the red oak threshold was initially 1/4" proud to the tile. And it wasn't even. It was 1/4" at one end an dead even at the other. With the smoothing plane I evened it all out and it looks great. It is even with the tile. There is an uneven 1/4" nominal chamfer and total of 1/2" drop to the hallway floor but you couldn't tell even after I told you to look.


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## jasoncarpentry (Feb 18, 2011)

Dave G: Thanks for the input; your project really turned out nicely! In my case, the higher floor is made of a "Pergo" type material which runs perpendicular to the threshold. The sections weren't cut off evenly, so I had planned to do one of two things to deal with this:

1) On the Pergo side, cut a rabbet on the threshold bottom to overlap the uneven ends, or 
2) Take a wood chisel, or a Skil saw, and cut the Pergo ends along a straight line. That way, I could make the edge of the threshold butt up against the flooring (like you did w/ the tile side of your floor).

I would still have to deal with the slope on the lower side, and would still have to shim it up w/ one or more tapered pieces. As far as the chamfer goes, you guys have recommended using a hand plane. Well, I don't have a hand plane, or the skill to use one. I had planned to cut the chamfer either on my table saw, or go ahead and install it, then use my small Porter-Cable belt sander to create the chamfer.

What do you think?


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