I need to reverse the swing of a solid wooden door in my home. My wife and I recently converted an unused room on our second floor to a bathroom. I removed the door to the room (including hinges) before the work. The door used to swing into the room and be hinged on the right side (looking into room from hall). I would like to reverse the door so that it will swing out. Can anyone suggest the best method to do this including methods of installing new hinges in door frame, locating hinges, installing new plate in door frame to receive door latch and patching old locations of hinges and plate in frame.

 

You will need to mortise new hinges into the opposite side of the frame. If you're good with a tape measure and chisel, you can do it by hand, but pros would use a hinge mortise jig, which gets tacked to the jamb, then a pattern bit in a router would make the mortise. The same would apply to the strike plate mortise, but a seperate strike / latch mortise jig would be used. (These are available online or from catalogs and vary in cost from $15 to $30, depending on whether you need the router bit with the jig or not). You will also need to reverse the hinges on your door, which means the spot where your hinges are on the door, will need to be mortised to the other side, which is easily done with a chisel.

The problem with changing the hinges on the door will be that it will leave the abandoned strike plate and hinge mortises on the other side of the door, with no good way to hide them, other than to use wood putty and try to sand it flat. (ugly unless its painted). Additionally, you'll see a bit of the old mortise on the door when it swings open, because your hinges will have moved about 1/4" to the opposite side of the door, leaving the old mortise exposed.

The only other problem you might run into is that if your old door frame is not square, and your door has been shaved to fit, when you turn it around it will no longer fit the way it once did, and will likely need to be shaved and custom fit again. If the opening is square, and the door has not be altered, you won't have this problem.