Thinking of Taking the Doorframe With the Height Marks? Read This First

Some families decide the only acceptable answer is the wood itself. Fair enough. If you’re moving and the door frame with the kids’ height marks is the one thing you can’t pack, it’s worth slowing down before anyone picks up a tool. Here’s how to tell what you’d actually be taking, what to raise with your agent first, and what to weigh on both sides.

Photograph and record the marks before anyone touches the wood. Here’s how. Trim can split and paint can flake, even in careful hands. If that happens, the photos are the chart.

Casing or jamb?

Stand in the doorway and look at the frame.

The jamb is the frame inside the opening: the two vertical pieces and the head piece that the door actually hangs from and closes against. The hinges are screwed to one side of it; the strike plate is on the other. It sits inside the wall opening, and the door doesn’t work without it.

The casing is the flat trim on the wall face around the opening — the piece that covers the gap between the jamb and the drywall. In most American houses it’s a strip of primed pine or MDF, two and a quarter to three and a half inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick, finished with caulk and paint. It’s decorative. The door works fine without it.

Most height marks are on the casing, on the flat face nearest the opening — it’s where a child’s back naturally sits. Some are on the jamb’s edge, where it’s easier to press a book flat. Run a finger across: if the surface your marks are on is flush with the wall and has a bead of caulk along its outer edge, it’s casing. If it’s the surface the door closes against, it’s the jamb.

What to raise with your agent

Trim and doors are usually treated as fixtures, which means they go with the house. Whether you can keep yours, and how that gets written down, depends on where you live and what your contract says. We can’t tell you that, so ask your agent. Ask before you list, or before you accept an offer, not after.

A few good questions to bring:

• Does the trim around this door count as part of the house?
• If I want to keep it, how should that go in the listing and the purchase agreement?
• Who puts new trim up, and when does it need to be done?
• What if I change my mind once there’s a signed offer?

Nobody wants a surprise about what’s staying and what’s going. The growth chart is not worth a lawyer’s letter.

If you’re a renter, the trim isn’t yours. Photograph the marks, trace them if you like, and talk to your landlord before anything else. Some landlords will work something out with you, but they’ll want to hear about it first.

If you decide to take the trim

If the marks are on the casing and you still want the wood, have a carpenter or handyman take it off. We won’t walk you through the how-to here. It’s a job for someone with the tools and the practice, and trim that’s been painted for years can split. You only get one try.

Here’s what to ask for, and what to tell them:

• Show them the marks first. Point out which face has the pencil lines. Tell them it can’t be scratched, scraped or marked.
• Ask for the piece whole. You want it in one length. Say so before they start.
• Tell them the opening will need new trim. Ask whether they can supply it and put it up in the same visit, and check the timing with your agent.
• Ask them to label it. The door it came from, and which end is the top, written on the back.
• Ask for a price up front. No surprises on the day.

Once it’s in your hands, treat it as the most fragile thing in the truck. It’s a seven-foot stick of painted pine.

If the marks are on the jamb

Here is the honest case: don’t.

The jamb is the door. Taking it means the door comes out too. To hand over a house with a working door, someone then has to put a new door unit in its place. That’s a big job and a real expense, and a carpenter is involved either way. And what you’ve carried away is an L-shaped assembly of frame and stop that’s awkward to display and doesn’t sit flat against a wall.

If the marks on the jamb are the only ones, the better path is to photograph them properly, record the heights, and either transfer them or have them printed at life size. You get the handwriting without taking apart a doorway.

If you’re still determined, talk it through with a carpenter first and get a quote for the whole job, new door included, before you commit.

Why you might not want to

The trim on the wall of the new house is a real, good thing. It’s also a piece of painted pine you have to find a place for, that shows every dent and paint chip, that won’t take a new mark without looking like an afterthought, and that has to be dealt with again the next time you move. It also leaves a gap behind: a doorway that needs new trim, and maybe some touch-up paint around it.

If you’d rather skip the carpenter, there are gentler ways to bring the marks along: photos, a traced copy, a written list of heights, a print. They’re all laid out in every way to save the height marks on your doorframe when you move.

Most families who take the casing also want a copy that lives on the wall and keeps working. That’s what we make: you photograph the marks, tell the software the height of two of them, and it straightens, stitches and calibrates the photos to real scale. The print is a canvas scroll with wooden hangers — the same pencil lines in the same handwriting at the same heights — that you keep measuring on in the new house. It’s Keep the Marks, $79 shipped anywhere in the 50 states, and it’s the same photos you should be taking before anyone picks up a tool. Some people take the casing and the print. Some take the print and leave the trim for the next family. Both are right.

Related

• Every way to save the height marks on your doorframe when you move
• How to photograph height marks so they stay accurate
• Painting over the height marks? Do these three things first
• Questions people ask about doorframe height marks