Having placed a bathhouse box on the site and covered it with a roof, the owners usually strive to begin arranging and finishing the structure as soon as possible. Depending on the type of structure, work begins immediately or after waiting the time required for initial shrinkage, for example, for log cabins made from wood with natural moisture. The building will have to be connected with utilities, assembled floors, insulated, tiled walls and ceilings, installed windows and doors. The latter are subject to special requirements. You can buy and install the finished product yourself. However, if it was not possible to find a design that satisfies the price and quality in terms of size, then all that remains is to start producing your own. In fact, making a bathhouse door with your own hands turns out to be quite a feasible task. But first you will have to select the material that meets your needs, understand the technology and be patient.
Preparation of material for bath doors
If a door structure needs to be installed in someone else’s room, then the first thing you need to do is look at the scope of work, assess the location and size of the future entrance to the room, and measure the thickness of the walls. And most importantly, before making a door to a bathhouse, it is extremely important to check the quality of the material from which you plan to assemble the door leaf and frame. Timber and boards are almost always crooked, but worst of all, if there are already cracks or chips on the surface, such wood needs to be disposed of.
Before starting work, boards prepared by the customer are subjected to additional processing:
- The ends are cut using a circular saw, a hand router or any other tool so that the side surface of the boards is perfectly flat and the folded door leaf does not even have micro-cracks;
- Boards are calibrated and selected according to thickness. If there is a supply of material, then it is best to select the required number of defect-free boards and adjust them to the same size with a jointer;
- Additionally, they are dried under a canopy to avoid shrinkage after assembling the door leaf.
For example, the thickness of a standard magpie board after finishing is reduced to 35 mm, the width of the material becomes 10 mm smaller due to the leveling of the plane. As a result, it turns out that in order to make wooden doors to a bathhouse with dimensions of 180x80 cm with your own hands, you will need at least five boards, 160 mm wide, without taking into account the dimensions of the door frame.
Material selection
Wooden products are popular . They are much more functional for a bathhouse than any other doors. The main advantage of wood is its ability to withstand temperature changes and high humidity. In addition, wood itself is an excellent heat insulator. Simple wooden structures with exquisite patterns can be seen in pictures depicting Old Russian baths.
It is also worth using wood to make a door handle. If, for example, you insert an iron handle, the high thermal conductivity of the metal will cause the element to heat up and you can burn your hand on it. Also, you should not make a bath door from plastic with your own hands.
to use antiseptics to treat the internal surface of the structure . They also treat the walls of the bathhouse. In no case should it be drying oil or varnish, since during bathing procedures people will inhale toxic fumes, which, combined with hot, humid air, can negatively affect human health. Often such substances cause severe headaches, weakness, fatigue, and instead of a healing effect, taking a bath will bring additional health problems.
The best material for a bath door is considered to be aspen or linden boards , knocked together tightly in one layer. This proven option is used and recommended by experienced craftsmen. The door to the steam room with your own hands can also be made from aspen or linden. Wood can withstand temperature changes and high air humidity, it is hygienic, hygroscopic, and products made from it are easy to manufacture, install and use.
After the base has been made, you need to take care of the insulation. Mineral fibers, felt, polystyrene foam, tow, and cotton wool are often used here. The exterior finishing of the structure is carried out by upholstery with leatherette, boards or even plywood. The materials for the sauna door should under no circumstances be deformed or heated by hot and humid air.
Dimensions and assembly technology of a bath door
Typically, the dimensions of a door to a bathhouse with a frame, or more precisely, the future opening in the wall for installing a trap, are determined by the number of whole boards laid in the door leaf. To do this, take the width of the processed board, multiply it by five, and adjust it to more or less acceptable dimensions of the bath door. Next, 2x35 mm is added to the required width - the thickness of the two sides of the door opening plus an installation gap of 10 mm. The height of the door for a bathhouse is calculated in the same way, and for the bottom edge you will need to add another 5 mm for shrinkage.
In addition, you need to take into account the peculiarities of the technology for assembling entrance doors for a bathhouse. The door leaf for the entrance to the bathhouse can be assembled in two ways:
- Cut a tenon and groove at the ends of a standard forty, as is done for a tongue and groove board. In this case, the total width of the canvas will decrease by 10x5=50 mm;
- Mill a groove 15 mm deep at the ends of the prepared and cleaned wooden workpiece; the joining of two boards is carried out on an inset dowel. In this case, the width of the doors and the dimensions of the opening in the wall of the bathhouse do not need to be adjusted.
You can make doors for a bathhouse using both methods, there is not much difference, although doors with dowels are more flexible and durable. The question of technology, how to make a door to a bathhouse, depends on the wishes of the customer and the availability of woodworking equipment.
For your information! For a novice carpenter, it is easier to make a door to a bathhouse step by step with your own hands using a doweled connection of the canvas.
Firstly, keyed doors for a bathhouse are considered a classic manufacturing option, and secondly, in the event of an accidental defect, you can always replace the key and redo the joint.
Budget door made of wood and fiberboard
You can make a simple wooden door from a wood frame, filler and fiberboard. To do this you will need the following materials.
- 50 mm thick board to make the frame.
- Fiberboard sheet - panels for the outer surface are cut from it.
- The filler of the inner surface can be stone wool insulation, pressed corrugated cardboard or other suitable material.
To begin with, lay out a sheet of fiberboard on a flat surface. After this, the contours of the door are applied to it, strictly maintaining 90-degree angles.
A frame of fifty-millimeter boards is assembled on this contour. It is assembled in the “tenon and groove” version, when a through groove is cut in one board, and a tenon suitable in size for the prepared groove is cut in the other. Another option is to remove quarters from the ends of the boards, and then lay them one inside the other.
Tools for building the entrance door to the bathhouse
It is very important, before making a door to a bathhouse with your own hands, to realistically assess your capabilities, namely, the availability of tools and devices for the job.
If you have at least basic carpentry experience, in order to assemble the entrance door to a bathhouse with your own hands, you will need a minimum set of tools:
- Manual electric router with a set of end trim and through cutters;
- A long metal ruler, you can take a two-meter plaster rule or any aluminum strip at least 200 cm long, fairly even and strong;
- Building level and plumb line for a mason;
- Electric grinder, belt or vibrating;
- Carpenter's chisel, wooden or metal tamping hammer;
- A set of carpentry clamps for clamping boards, 20-60 mm thick;
- Wood glue, you can use PVA-M, one bathhouse door will take at least 7-10 liters, linen or jute tow.
In addition, to install a door in a bathhouse with your own hands, you will need to make cuts in the wall, so you will need to rent an electric or gasoline chain saw for at least one day.
Assembly and insulation of a self-made product
Do-it-yourself wooden bathhouse doors are assembled in this way:
1. If the boards were purchased untreated, then they must first be leveled (cut off uneven edges) and sanded.
2. At the jigsaw, we adjust the depth of the blade – 2 cm. We make markings on the edges of each board: we draw two lines that are located from the edges of the edge at a distance of 1.5 cm. We make cuts along these lines.
3. On one side of the element, knock out the middle part of the cut rib with a narrow chisel. On the other side of the element, draw two lines at a distance of 2 cm from the edge (top and bottom of the board). Raise the canvas 0.5 cm up and make cuts in the designated places. As a result, we get elements with a tenon protruding from one edge and a groove on the other.
4. Place two unnecessary pieces of even boards on the floor at a distance of 1.5 m from each other. The processed elements are laid across them on top and connected by their ribs. Along the edges of the assembled canvas, small pieces of bars are nailed to unnecessary boards.
5. Thin pieces of timber are inserted between the pieces of timber and the canvas and driven tightly in with a hammer. The elements of the canvas are firmly fixed and tightly compressed.
6. Marks are made at a distance of 30cm from the top and bottom of the canvas. The bars are cut so that on one side their edge is 6 cm, and on the other - 3 cm. As a result, we get the so-called “needles”.
7. Place the needle on the canvas in the intended place, its point is flush with the edge of the canvas, and the wider side protrudes beyond it. We outline it. We make cuts along the marked lines with a jigsaw (the depth of the blade is 2 cm).
8. Between the two cuts we go through the jigsaw again several times (the wood is crushed into thin chips). We knock out the crushed part with a chisel and hammer. Carefully level the surface of the groove. We drive the needle into it until it stops. We carry out a similar procedure on the other side of the canvas in the intended place.
9. Drill through holes in the needle at a distance of 10 cm from the edges. We drive pins into them. We do the same with the second needle. We cut off the protruding edges of the pins, needles and the excess length of the canvas, which should be 1.8 m.
10. We place a wide board with one edge to the right side of the upper needle, and the other to the left side of the lower one. We make marks in the places of future cutting (the board should subsequently fit diagonally between the needles) and cut off the excess.
11. Using self-tapping screws, fasten the board placed diagonally. We screw them in in a checkerboard pattern.
The finished product is covered with foil-foamed polyethylene foam. To prevent the aesthetic appearance of the product from being spoiled, the insulation is covered with clapboard. The insulating and decorating material is fastened using small thin nails.
Making a door leaf for the entrance to the bathhouse
It takes a professional carpenter one day to make a wooden bathhouse door with his own hands. For amateur builders, this period is approximately twice as long, but usually they agree with the customer to make one entrance for the bathhouse and one door for the steam room in three days. It won’t work faster, since before installing the door in the bathhouse, at least a day must pass for the glue to dry and shrink.
If the customer insists on the size and shape of the door to the bathhouse, then it would be correct and far-sighted, before trying to make a bathhouse door with his own hands, familiarize the future owner with the design, discuss the level of rise of the threshold and the method of sealing the cracks in the doorway. As a rule, the customer does not object to your option for entering the bathhouse, but it is still better to inform him in advance.
Cutting grooves and making keys
The first step is to cut a groove on the end surface of the boards for installing the connecting key. The two strongest and most beautiful boards selected and prepared for work are set aside in advance; in these parts the groove will be cut on only one side. These parts will go to the left and right sides of the door leaf.
Milling the groove is performed in the following sequence:
- The board is fixed in a horizontal position using clamps on a carpentry workbench. A milling line is drawn along the end with a ruler and pencil;
- A metal ruler or rule is placed along the marking line and firmly fixed. This will help make the groove and, ultimately, the door leaf of the bathhouse as flat and even as possible;
- The groove is cut using an end mill with a diameter of at least 10 mm; too large a width will weaken the blade, a small cut will not hold the board, and the entire structure may sag in the bathhouse doorway.
The next step is to make the fastening dowels; to assemble the canvas you will need five slats. Fastening material can be cut from the remnants of prepared bath boards or purchased ready-made.
Important! The blank for the key is laid on a workbench and ground so as to obtain the same thickness along the entire length of the lath. It is very important to achieve uniform thickness so that the key does not fall out of the groove at one end of the board and does not jam at the other.
The key-rail should fit into the grooves of adjacent boards with a slight interference, to make it easier to insert it into the groove; small chamfers are removed on the edges with sandpaper.
Assembling the door leaf
The next stage in the manufacture of a bath door is the assembly of the door leaf. Initially, the boards are joined with dowels “dry”, without any gluing of the joints. The assembled door is laid out on a workbench and hammered with a wooden hammer to completely seat the keys in the grooves.
Dry assembly is required to ensure that all parts of the bath door fit correctly. In addition, the protruding ends of the boards and dowels along the upper and lower edges of the canvas are trimmed.
If there are no problems, each joint is disassembled one by one, coated with glue and knocked back together. The glued bathhouse door is laid on a workbench and secured with clamps until the adhesive seams are completely dry. While the glue has not hardened, excess adhesive mass is carefully removed at the joints. This must be done immediately, otherwise within a day the door surface will be covered with irremovable dark spots of adhesive film.
We put horizontal crossbars on the door
The next day, after the glue has completely set, it is necessary to make horizontal crossbars. Essentially, these are two thick wooden blocks laid horizontally or at a slight slope on the sauna door.
Crossbars perform two functions:
- Pull the fabric horizontally;
- They transfer the load from the weight of the structure to the canopies and door frame at the entrance to the bathhouse.
Hinges for doors to the bathhouse are also placed on the crossbars, which allows you to unload the door leaf and transfer most of the weight directly to the door.
The design and method of fastening the crossbars of bathhouse doors differ significantly from similar parts in ordinary doorways used in sheds, garages, warehouses, and summer kitchens. Horizontal bars are installed on the bathhouse door, without any fasteners, and the connection is ensured by a dovetail locking profile.
The sides of each block are cut using an electric milling machine so that the cross-section of the crossbar forms an isosceles trapezoid. The same cutter is used to cut grooves on the sauna door leaf.
To prevent the door from moving horizontally, the grooves of each lock in the door leaf are not cut strictly horizontally, but with their own slight slope. After adjusting the dimensions, the bars are placed in locks, glued and fixed with clamps until completely dry.
The finished, dried assembly must be sanded with an electric grinder; this will remove burrs and make the outer surface as flat and smooth as possible. If the need for additional finishing arises, the door to the bathhouse can always be painted or covered with film.
Features of making a bathhouse door yourself are shown in the video
Making a loot and installing it at the entrance to the bathhouse
After installing the crossbars, the actual dimensions of the doors to the bathhouse become known. You can cut an opening at the entrance to the bathhouse, but first you need to make a door frame.
To make the loot, the same forty board is used as for the door to the bathhouse. For the vertical sides of the door, two boards are cut out, 200 mm wide and 60 mm longer than the door leaf. Similarly, two short horizontal boards are cut for the threshold of the door frame and the top crossbar. We lay out the cut sections along the perimeter of the assembled door leaf and temporarily sew them together at the corners with the remnants of the slats and upholstery nails.
Since the bathhouse door should only swing outward, the panel will need to be recessed into the hole from the entrance side. To do this, mark a strip 10 mm deep along the contour of the inner surface of the box, which will need to be cut with a router or any other available tool.
Next, on the outside of the side posts of the door frame, you will need to cut a groove with which the loot will be held in the doorway of the wooden bathhouse. We connect all the parts of the door frame using self-tapping screws. The side posts should be adjacent to the ends of the door leaf with a gap of 1.2-2 mm; in the area of the threshold the gap is increased to 5 mm. We strengthen the box at the corners with temporary slats and spacers; as soon as the loot is in the doorway of the bathhouse, the stuffed slats will be removed.
We put the frame and hang the door leaf
The first step is to measure the outer dimensions of the box; using them you will have to mark the contour of the cut of the doorway at the entrance to the bathhouse. This should be done only by practical measurement, and not by calculation, otherwise there is a possibility of making the cut in the bathhouse wall too large.
The opening for the box should be 6-7 cm smaller than the width of the finished canvas. When making a cut in the bathhouse wall, you should also take into account the width of the cut. Initially, mark the height of the threshold in the bathhouse, then measure the height of the box, draw the axial one and set aside the width of the tray. Using a plumb line, markings are applied to the wall of the bathhouse under the cut line.
After an opening has been cut in the bathhouse for installing the frame and the future door, it is necessary to cut a vertical tenon line on the wall using a router or manually with a hammer and chisel. The width and height of the tenon must fully correspond to the dimensions of the groove cut on the sides of the loot.
Next comes the assembly of the box. The threshold is installed first, then the side posts are stuffed onto the spikes, and the top cross member is attached last. In the upper ceiling part of the box, between the wall and the crossbar, there should be a free space 5-7 mm high, which is filled with flax or jute fiber and will subsequently be covered with platbands. The gap must be maintained to compensate for the settlement of the bath. If the construction of the bathhouse is made of brick, the gap is simply filled with foam.
Before knocking down the parts of the box, you need to place the finished door leaf in it and align the entire structure horizontally and relative to the facade of the bathhouse and wooden wedges.
Hinges for bath doors
At the last stage of arranging the entrance, the door leaf is hung. Before installing hinges for bathhouse doors, the door leaf is slightly raised in the frame using two small wooden wedges. Gate canopies are the easiest to install; they are located entirely on the outside of the door leaf. The short part is attached to the scuttle, the other side is sewn onto the crossbars.
If, according to the design conditions of the facade of the bathhouse, it is necessary to completely hide the elements of the canopies, then screw-in hinges can be used.
If the entrance room in the bathhouse is well isolated from the dressing room and steam room, then the doors can also be hung on standard butterfly hinges. The main advantage of such canopies is their high strength and reliability; one pair is enough to hang the heaviest door in a bathhouse.
To attach the hinges you will need:
- Mark the contours of the fastening on the slit and on the end of the canvas;
- Use a chisel to cut grooves on both parts and secure the canopies with ordinary self-tapping screws.
All that remains is to hang the canvas on the mating part of the loop and adjust the pressure so that the door to the bathhouse closes without touching the trap. After installing the trim, seal, handle and lock, the door to the bathhouse is considered ready.
What wood is used as raw material?
Having decided to independently manufacture a building element, the master selects a material suitable for a specific design.
For solid wood doors it is recommended to use:
- pine is one of the cheap materials that can be easily processed, but can dry out over time;
- alder is also an affordable, light and soft wood, but one must take into account its ability to dry;
- birch - it combines density and sufficient hardness with viscosity and beautiful texture, but this material can deteriorate over time;
- oak boards - characterized by high strength and durability, requiring skills in wood processing;
- beech - it also belongs to hardwood, and due to its ability to absorb moisture, it requires additional processing;
- larch, walnut and maple are ideal materials for a beautiful door, durable and resistant to all influences;
- In the premises of expensive apartments or cottages, mahogany veneer is used for interior doors.
Door trim and fittings - how to do it?
We will also make the bolts and handles on the door to the steam room and other compartments, as well as the strapping ourselves. We take wooden blocks and cut them to the required length. Vertical bars for piping must correspond in length to the overall height of the door, horizontal bars - to the width of the entrance structure. Important point! The length of the outer horizontal bars (bottom and top) is taken 7 cm less (53 cm with a door width of 60 cm).
You will need to select a groove in the bars. This is done in two stages: a narrow groove about 2.5 cm deep and 2.6 cm wide is selected; a second groove is selected (on top of the first) with a depth of about 1 cm and a width of 5 cm. The need for two grooves arises if you want to cover the door with block house clapboard. In one “groove” the lining will fit, in the other - directly tongue-and-groove boards.
The grooves are selected using an end mill. It is also necessary for making a stepped tenon on horizontal bars, which must fit exactly into the groove. Now we just need to assemble the made harness into one whole and check it with a square for the accuracy of the angles. If the corners are not perfectly straight, you will need to sharpen the groove slightly.
I think you can make the bolts on the door, as well as the handles, without any problems. They can be cut with a simple hacksaw according to your own sketch. If you don't want to bother with small work, just buy ready-made wooden fittings at the store. All you have to do is make a frame for the door and install the structure you made yourself into the opening.
Important to remember
Mandatory details:
- The frame for the door to the bathhouse, including the steam room, is made only of wood (even if the door leaf is glass) . If you choose a glass door in an aluminum frame, you risk getting burned every time you leave the steam room.
- The door handle to the bathhouse can only be metal if the door does not lead to the steam room . If the holiday house has several rooms and the same doors with handles everywhere, it is better to ignore the design and give preference to practicality. Choose an original wooden handle without varnish or stain. Otherwise, the metal in the steam room will inevitably lead to burns.
Notice how carefully the mounting holes are hidden by decorative caps
- You cannot use non-natural materials in the steam room . Otherwise, at high temperatures, the binding components of chipboard, glue, varnishes and wood impregnations will be released and you will have to inhale them along with the steam. Therefore, a wooden door should be unfinished, and its durability will be ensured by the right choice of wood - larch, aspen or oak.
- The ideal lock for a steam room is magnetic . It has no moving protruding parts, so it is the safest and most durable.
Now you can make a beautiful and reliable door for a bathhouse on your own. Follow the instructions and try to perform all actions as carefully as possible, and then the new door will delight you with its appearance and impeccable performance for decades.
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