SHED BUILDING VIDEO 14 OF 15

How to Install an Exterior Door in a Shed

Learn how to install an entrance door on your shed or any project with this easy guide & video. Step-by-step instructions for a professional installation.

Taught by Henry Reinders, a professional builder, renovator and woodworker with more than 45 years of hands-on experience.

Popular Video Chapters

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0:04 Inspect the door and prepare the rough opening

Inspect the prehung exterior door, verify the handing and prepare a square, properly sized rough opening.

4:04 Dry-fit, centre and level the door unit

Dry-fit the unit, centre it in the opening and level the sill before adding permanent fasteners.

7:34 Shim and secure the hinge side

Henry shows how to shim behind each hinge and secure the hinge jamb without twisting the frame.

11:20 Fasten through the jamb behind weatherstripping

Place hidden fasteners behind the weatherstripping so the jamb remains secure and the finish stays clean.

14:54 Shim the latch side without bowing the frame

Shim the latch side at the lock and strike points while maintaining an even door-to-jamb reveal.

19:12 Trim shims and insulate with low-expansion foam

Trim the shims and fill the perimeter with low-expansion window-and-door foam without bowing the jambs.

22:39 Install the glass insert safely

Follow safe handling steps to position and secure the glass insert in the exterior door.

24:48 Support the sill and finish the lock hardware

Henry explains how to support the sill and complete the lock-set and strike-plate adjustments.

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Video 15: Install Exterior Trim →

Exterior-Door Installation Quick Reference

A door that swings, latches and seals properly starts with dry shims and a few things you should never do to the jamb.

Key specs at a glance

Shims: must be dry — wet shims shrink resulting in jamb movement and doors that do not close properly
Shim placement: installed in opposing pairs for a flat nailing or screwing surface
Top of jamb: no permanent shims there – needs room for stud shrinkage
Spray foam: apply moderately; excess expansion can bow the jamb or make door bind
Deadbolt Strike plate: reinforced, with long screws into the wall framing

Common mistakes to avoid

Using wet or damp wood shims
Shimming the top of the jamb permanently
Overfilling gaps around the jamb with spray foam – especially above the door
Installing single shims instead of opposing pairs – resulting in twisted jamb and other issues

PROJECT RESOURCES

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Frequently Asked Questions

Questions are based on the topics covered in this video and common questions Henry receives from customers via email.

Why must door shims be dry?

Wet wood shims can shrink as they dry, allowing the door jamb to move and the gaps around the door to change. Watch at 4:04

Why are shims installed in opposing pairs?

The paired wedges create a flat, adjustable bearing surface that supports the jamb without twisting it when screwed or nailed. Watch at 7:34

Should the top of the door jamb be shimmed?

No, do not use permanent shims above the jamb because shrinking header framing/studs could press on them and make the door bind. Watch at 14:54

Can spray foam distort a door jamb?

Yes. Apply it moderately because excessive expansion can bow the jamb and alter the door spacing clearances. If you do, let it cure and trim excess before putting on finish trim. Watch at 19:12

How is the deadbolt strike plate strengthened?

Use a reinforced strike plate and long screws that reach through the jamb into the wall framing. Watch at 24:48

Complete Video Transcript

Use the expandable transcript to read Henry’s instructions found in this video – with timestamps linked to each section in the video.

Open the complete video transcript

Welcome to CountryLifeProjects.com. I’m Henry Reiners. This is video 14 of 15 videos in our shed project. In this video, I’m going to be showing you exactly how to install this entrance door as well as the glass light for the door. It’s pretty straightforward. Just follow the process. Let’s get started with the installation. In this video, we’re going to be installing the door for our shed. It’s a regular entry door, brand new. That’s this one over here. We got a light in this one. We actually got a good deal on this. As you can see, it’s a 36 inch door full aluminum seal, weather stripping, et cetera, et cetera. And over here we have the light that

we’ll be putting in after we get the frame installed. You’re also going to need a bundle of shims. Don’t bother with the little packages that you can buy for three or four bucks. They’re a waste of money. You can get these bundles of shims generally for five or six bucks. There’s usually about three times as much as you see here. Just make sure they’re dry. You do not want wet shims. If you use wet shims and they shrink, it’s going to be loose between your door and your door frame here and that won’t be good down the road. And you’re also going to need, and this is what I like to use, these are finishing deck screws. They’re coated. You can buy

those at Home Depot, Lowe’s, quite a few building stores. It does require a special bit. It looks like this, as you can see, it’s got a very narrow tip on it. That’s to prevent damage to your wood and you can get ’em in square head or Torx head, which is also known as a star head. And then also typically with a new door, you’ll get a package of screws like this. There’s six in here. There’s two for each hinge, and these will be swapped out with the screws that are in the hinges. That’ll go directly into the two by four behind the hinge. That’s for that side there. Your hardware, your door handle or your deadbolt will generally have a long screw for that purpose

as well on the deadbolt side of your door. Now let’s go back to the door opening here before you get started. Now, if you follow our instructions throughout all these videos, everything here should be level, the wall should be level this way. Your opening should be level this way. So we’re just going to go ahead and check everything and we’re level there. We’re level there, and I’ve actually checked this site already on the floor. We level all around and you want to do that because if you have this wall and let’s say a little bit out of level that way and you have this wall and it’s a little bit out of level that way,

you’re going to have to compensate for that when you put your door in. So ideally, if both walls are the same and the floor is level, it makes it very simple to install. That’s the case here. So next I’m going to put the door in place. I’m just going to reverse it though because I want you to see what you need to look for as you’re installing the door. So I’m just going to grab the door, put that in place and show you that Okay, I’ve put the door in place. It’s the reverse of the way we’re actually installing it, but this is just so I can show you that as we go along and we’re putting the shims in and we’re getting

things fastened. While you should be looking for on the inside, which is the critical area and which is what you’re going to use as a guide to make sure your door’s installed properly. Now, if you look at the door right now, what we want on the inside when it’s done right is the door needs to be flush, top and bottom. And you’re looking to make sure that this space here and this space here and the space on your hinge side is equal all the way down. And to determine that the space at the top of your door this way is what determines your spacing all the way down because the hinge and the

width of the door doesn’t change at this point. The reason that you want the floor to be level ideally is that this space up here, as soon as you drop your door in will be equal. If your floor is out of level, you have to determine which way your door has to come up or down in order to make this equal. So if your hinge side was higher, then what’s going to happen is the door would hit here and you would actually have a problem with that binding and you’d have to make that compensation at the bottom. If you took your time with the construction of the shed, you shouldn’t have that problem. Your floor should be level

and this issue up here should not happen and we should be able to just go ahead and install it. I’m going to flip the door around and show you the first steps for installing your door. Okay, we’ve got our door in place. Just one little trick here. If you’re doing this kind of install where you got trim going on here after, in this case it’s one by four. So you can see on quite a ways out here with this block, but you can actually, your trim is going to come up to this line here, so you can put a block on both sides of the door to hold it in place and flush it the top so you can work

with the rest of the door without worrying about it moving or falling out or whatever. And just make sure this screw is about center of this space over here. You won’t see that after if you do need to adjust the door up and down, these will move a little bit this way. They’ll keep the door flushed this way, so don’t have to worry about that. So you can do that. What you want to have is a door centered in your opening. So you have room on both sides for shingles and at the top here, what I do is normally I don’t use these blocks. That’s just a little help tool or tip to just make it easier for you. But what I normally

do is I tighten, I put shims at the top on both sides of the door right here because it can affect the shape of the jam. It won’t bow it out. There’s nowhere that this can go. One thing you might see, and I’ll point that out before we go any farther on the top here, you should have a half inch to three quarter inch space. Three quarter is ideal. You’ll sometimes see videos or PDFs or whatever that show shims up here. You absolutely don’t want to do that because as building shrinks and your framing shrinks this in here, this space is going to get smaller. If you have shims in there, that’s going to put pressure on the top of your jam and it’s going to

put pressure on your door and it’s going to bind. So absolutely no shims up here. That can be filled with a insulation or foam spray foam but no shim. So you don’t want any wood between here and here. Okay, so once you have this solid on the top here ready to go, you then go down to the bottom and do the same thing at the jam. And because the jams or the sill I should say, because the sills here, again, it can’t squeeze any tighter than what’s here. So it’s safe enough to do that. Once you have that done and you can open your door, it’s not going to go anywhere,

and then inside you can make sure that your spacing along the top of your door is good. And also check the spacing at the top on the side and the bottom at the edge of your door, and if that’s equal and this side here looks good, which it should be because it’s the hinge side, then you’re ready to start putting the remainder of your hinges in and you can start screwing it in place. Right now everything is fine. Also, in addition to my spacing around the door, the door is actually flush top and bottom with the jam so everything’s sitting nice and flat, which also means that for weather stripping your door is sitting very nicely against your

weather stripping all the way around, so that’s important as well. So that’s done. We’re going to go ahead. What you want to do is do your shims or your hinge side first. We’re going to put shims in behind each hinge and then we’re going to screw it and I’m going to show you exactly how we’re going to screw that so you don’t see it later. Just initially later we’re going to put screws through where the hinges are. We’re going to remove those to put your shims in. Once you have your door secure, top and bottom and everything looks good, you want to do this first and what you do, if you can do both sides

like this, great. You just put one this way and you put one that way. There’s a reason for putting hinges or shims from both sides. If you look at this, the shim, obviously if you just use one, it’s got an angle to it, you put two together, you have an equal surface, which means that you won’t twist or bend the jam when you screw it in. So we’re going to go ahead and do that. Now you don’t want to over once you have your door nicely positioned, these just need to be snug. They don’t have to be super tight as long as they don’t fall out. That’s all you want because

if you go too tight or you bang ’em too tight, it’s going to push your jam out. You don’t want to do that. So we’re going to go ahead and finish that up. On this side, I’ll put all the shims in. You can also put ’em in this way. If you have enough space here, put ’em in this way, that one first, and you can do it all from the outside and then put this one in like that. I’m just doing it from both sides. I have the window here to do that. Now one other thing I should point out is I like a minimal amount of space around my jam,

three eighths of an inch. When you do your rough opening, you may prefer to have a half inch on both sides, which means that you would make your rough opening one inch bigger than your doorframe size. This right now is three quarters of an inch bigger. That’s just a personal preference, but if you’re new to installing doors, you might want to use the one inch spacing. So those are in place and we’re going to come up with a closeup here to show you how to do the screws. Hang on. Okay, on here with the newer doors, you can see they’ve left out the screws here, which we have available to us. They came with the door, but let’s say you got a door that doesn’t have that.

You can also use finishing screws and in behind the weather stripping here, just peel it back and just put a screw right here. Actually, you want to make sure you’re going through your shims. It helps lock ’em in place. Make sure this doesn’t turn against the weather stripping. It might ruin it. So It was right in finishing screws. You get a nice small hole, you drop that back and you don’t even see it. Now for those, it’s going to change the bit for these. These are the screws that come with that, and you’ll notice, I don’t know if you can see that, but it has a bit of a groove in. There i’s a self drilling or cutting edge. It

cuts through the wood, so less likely to split the wood, so you just center that in the hole and just tight. Doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to go over, go on it and that’s it. So either way, you can secure it either way and you only want to secure it where the hinges are in between the hinges. You only do that if you have a really bad jam like up here. If this was wowed in or for some reason, then you would do that. Otherwise, when you put your spray foam insulation in here, it’ll stabilize that later. So we’re going to finish off this side and then I’m going to show you how to do the other side.

Okay, once we’ve got your HCH side screwed, what you want to do is shut the door And you want to make sure that when you tightened it, it didn’t pull anything out of whack on this side of the door here. So you want to be still flush on the inside, make sure everything’s still in proper place. You can also, if you look here, you’ll see that this jam is perfectly flushed with this wall here. It’s going to make it very easy to put our trim on later, so everything looks good. The spacing with our door was good, so we’re going to put in the shims here. You want to put ’em between the deadbolt, the first one between the deadbolt

and where your door handle is going to be, and just snug like that. Close the door to make sure that it hasn’t pushed the jam out too much. That hasn’t moved at all. Now in the same way that I showed you with the finishing screw on the other side and peel the weather strip back. Oops. Normally these stay on, they’re pretty good. It’s probably because I was pulling that back. Okay, and again, now this side here, I’m just going to go above the Shem, so just in case I have to move them. Now that happened because as I’m pushing the screw and it’s actually pushing the jam out a little bit,

you want to make sure they stay in the same place. So I’m just going to double check, make sure nothing’s changed. Okay, our spacing right along the jam here is still good. Now, when you put your dead bolt in, it will come with two three inch screws or it should. Now, if you were to put one in here and you don’t have a shim going across here, it will pull the jam over. So we are going to put some shims, Hang on Right there as well. That way when these get tightened, it is not going to go anywhere. Now we can put this one right through the S shim because this one was secured and everything was fine as far as our spacing went,

so we know we don’t have to adjust anything. Once you get these two done, then you do one about halfway between here and the sill and one about halfway between here and the top of your doorframe and provided you have a good jam, that should be all you need, and I’ll go ahead and do that. Okay? Once your door is in place, everything is secured. You got your shims in place, you’ve screwed everything. And again, one here, two here on one between the or above the deadbolt, one below here. So you have good backing there, top and bottom. And you can also put a screw near the top here and a screw near the top here. Just don’t it. That’ll

help make sure everything is completely secure. What we didn’t show you is we do have a bead of glue underneath the sill, the wood part of the sill, so that’ll keep that secure because it’s a shed. We didn’t use any special sill kit or anything like that. We also, the way we’re doing the trim, there’s very unlikely water’s going to get into the shed through that point. That’ll be shown later. Okay, so now we’ve got that down. We can take our blocks off. I’ll show you how to trim the shims. It’s really easy. Now, there’s two ways you can do this. One is just with an exacto knife. You want to make sure that you trim it back from the surface here, you just score ’em

and snap ’em off. The other way, you can do it, and if you have one of these little saws, You can just cut them off. I like cutting this way because when you snap ’em where you cut through, they’re guaranteed to be flush. So I’m going to finish trimming those off and then I’ll just show you a couple last details that are particular to the shed in this door. Okay, we’ve got our door in. We’ve got our shims trimmed off. They’re completely flush or less than the surfaces here, so they won’t interfere with our trim. Now, we haven’t insulated this shed, we don’t plan to, but I still recommend using spray foam in these gaps

because what it’ll do is it binds your door to your two by four frame, makes it really solid, gives it a nice solid feel. If your framing lumber was fairly dry when you were framing and you don’t expect too much settling in here, go ahead and put some spray foam up here. I just wouldn’t use too much, just enough to seal it so that it can compress if it has to without pushing down the top of your frame. Same thing on this side. Go ahead and fill that in. Don’t close it off on either side when you do that, because if you have, there’s no way for the foaming to escape. It can actually push out on your frame. So just once you have your

outside trim on, go ahead and put some spray foam in there. So next we’re going to put in the light for the door. It’s pretty straightforward. It comes with screws for the interior frame and the interior frame is the one with the holes. It also comes with a package of little buttons that you can pop in here once it’s installed. The outside piece, This piece here has a gasket on it, so be very careful when you’re handling this that you don’t grab that when it’s packaged together. This doesn’t get touched so it stays intact. So you can be very careful with that. I’ve also put a block on the floor,

keep the door from going back so I can put some pressure on this. I’m going to put this inside, put it the way you’re going to position it. Now also, I should grab that again, if you’re a little bit nervous about using a power driver for your screws here because you might hit the glass, just use a normal hand screwdriver and even if you do use a power driver, don’t drive ’em all the way in. Do the last bit by hand so you can torque it on just perfectly. I’m just going to put this here. These openings are very precise so you don’t have to worry about alignment. And there’s no weep holes on these in the same way you would expect on a window.

So there’s no top or bottom. You just get this in to where the plastic part of the frame is sitting inside. Just push it on, Give it a nice push and that gasket will stick. Make sure there’s no piece of grass as we have here. Now see, I can push on the inside and it’s not pushing out. I’m just going to do the first few screws by hand. Put our frame on the inside, everything will line up properly. It has a tendency to want to pop out, so you might just want to start a screw on the bottom. Just give it a few turns, just keep it from popping out.

Then push the top in and sides. This frame has built-in spacers. Now it’s completely in place. And just put the screws in lightly up first, just a very go around the perimeter. Hold the outside while you’re screwing it in. Do one on the side, one on the top, one on the other side just to make sure the whole unit is secure. And then go ahead and just finish screwing it completely off when you’re done. This should be nice and tight all the way around here on both sides. And you might even see a little bit of the gasket ooze out. That’s not a big deal. That’s normal. So I’m going to go

ahead and finish this off. And then we’re going to take a look at our deadbolt and door handle. Now, just one more thing as you’re screwing these on, and I do prefer to use just the regular screwdriver is you’ll see when you’re inside and you’re screwing it on the space between the two trims come together and as soon as they stop pulling together, that’s tight enough. If you keep going, you potentially could strip the screw and then your bond is gone. There’s nothing you can do about it. You have to get a bigger screw, not a good situation. So as you go around and tighten them, as soon as it stops pulling together

anymore, then it’s good enough. And then you can double check by looking all the way around the perimeter here. And if that’s tight on both sides of the door, then you’re done. That’s about all there is to put one of these in. They take about five, 10 minutes tops. Okay, well one of the last of a few things to do here until we have our trim in here supporting this sill. As I’ve kind of shown before in a few different videos, this sill here is very weak. Until we get that supported, you step on. I mean, I can bend that with my thumb, so that’s not good because the only real support on this sill starts about back here.

So once our trim is in, it will support that. But in the meantime, just while you’re working, it’s going to pop a three quarter inch piece of plywood underneath here. Screw that tight to the building that is nice and sturdy. Now I can stand on that. It’s not going to get damaged, so just screw a piece on here while you’re finishing everything else up. And once we get ready to put this bottom trim in, we can take that off and show you how to do that part. But next, I’m just going to show you a couple items with door handles and some of the plates that come with them. Sometimes you won’t get the right one, so I’m going to show you that next.

Okay, I just want to show you a couple things in regards to your door hardware. I’m not going to show you how to install it. There’s too many different brands and there’s a variety of ways that they can be put in, but there are a couple of things that most people usually don’t realize. Most lock sets and deadbolt latches come set at two and three eighths. Most doors. The setback, which is the center of the hole in your door back is two and three quarters. Most of ’em will on your latch or your door handle will just slide back. Some have little lever or different mechanisms. Those are usually fairly easy to figure out

on your dead bolts. However, again, different manufacturers have different ways of doing this, but for example, in this one here, you can’t adjust this If the bolt’s in, if you turn the bolt out, then you can just simply pull it out, lock it back in place, and you can just drop the dead bolt back. Now it’s set up at two and three quarter inches. The other thing that you want with any deadbolt is a good strong plate like that. This particular set came with a plate like this. Well, this is your normal cutout for your striker plate, for your deadbolt. This is kind of useless. These ones you can buy separately. And you’ll see that we have two small holes, two large holes.

Some of the better lock sets come with another plate that goes on top of this for a finished look and just has a couple of screws here and there’s holes in the plate. So if you get a good lock set, schlage, which is my preference, it will come with that. And on here, the last things, you’ll see that this fits that way, but our corners are rounded. Some of these do come with rounded corners more often than not, though, they’ll be square. So just take a half inch chisel and just square these corners out. It’s really simple. Just line your chisel up with the edge there and just clean that little piece out there.

Just do the same thing on all four corners. So all this will be needed. Now, when you’re putting this in, make sure the big screws Are on the inside because that will assure you that when you put them through, they’re going to go through into the two by four and behind. That’s about a half inch back, maybe three quarters maximum into the two by four, and that gives you a lot of strength. Now, most new door frames, there’s a metal plate back here and there’s a space in that plate for the screws to go through that. So screw those in. I recommend pre-drilling them. The screws are actually quite big,

so we’re going to pre-drill that. We’re going to screw that in and don’t, as long as they’re snug and plush, and this is nice and tight, that’s all you need. Our shims will keep the jam from pulling back. So we’re going to go ahead, finish up the door. Again, I’m not going to show you how to put the lock sets in. They’re pretty straightforward and they’re all different in one way or another. But those are some of the main points to remember. Hopefully that helps you out a bit. Okay, our door is completed. Now there’s only one last thing to do. The lock set and that’ll put on after this strip on The bottom here

needs to be fastened on the inside once you have your door in place. So you would just simply make sure that this is right at the edge of your door here and on the inside you have slots here. And using a number screw number six, screw. Screw that in on the inside. Again, don’t overtighten. Just snug. And while you do is you would close your door. Make sure this is seated properly on the brown sill strip. It doesn’t have to be overly tight. Just push it down gently, screw it in. Open your door, make sure that it grabs nicely, that little bit of feel stick you get there. That’s normal. And that will ease up a little as it wears. Just a little

bit down on the rubber surface. And that’s it. Your door is done and we are ready for trim.

Continue the Shed-Building Series

Follow the lessons in sequence so each completed stage is ready for the work that follows.

← Video 13: Install Shingles

All 15 Shed Videos

Video 15: Install Exterior Trim →