My first house. Noticed that the area of the doorframe where the strike plate should be is quite worn, and of course, there is no striker
What are my options here? Do I need to have the entire frame replaced? Can a section be removed and replaced with new wood?
I checked for similar posts and although these are close, they aren't exactly the same damaged door frame Is this door striker and lock safe?
I would remove the door trim on the right hand side of the picture.
Cut out maybe 1 to 2 feet of the damage piece and replace it, using long screws to hold it.
Make a new striker hole and replace the trim.
Will probably not be as strong as replacing the whole piece, but it will depend on how strong you want or need the door catch to be.
Non-standard method, but it should be strong:
The idea here is to fasten the striker into something solid (the wood pillar) on the left) and not to the damaged door frame.
Remove wood from pillar so it is flush with the frame.
Cut 5mm thick sheet metal into a shape that makes a striker, fasten to pillar with screws ("x")
Replace the wood that was cut off from the pillar, and do some finishing.
As an example of a related thing I did:
It was a very old door, difficult and expensive to replace. One day, thieves broke in. That's how I discovered the lock side of the door was actually full of holes, which had been plugged with plaster over the decades (probably centuries) and painted over. It was well done, with who knows how many coats of paint on top, so I didn't see it, but the lock was screwed into plaster, so it broke easily.
Since the back of the door was flat, I simply reinforced the whole door with plywood, and fastened the lock into that with carriage bolts.
The idea is to not fasten the thieves' target to a fragile repaired area. This allows to make an aesthetic repair without worrying too much about strength.
Cut out the damaged parts.
Depending on your experience and skills, replace the excised pieces with whatever combination of filler and hand-made substitutes for metal, plaster or wood seems to suit the scenario.
