How can I conceal poorly-fit floor boards around door jambs?

Question

So the previous owner installed their own hardwood floors and there are no extra pieces left over. The cuts and installion around the door jambs are awful. There are significant gabs been the jambs and the wood floor. Normally I would place quarter round to hide these kind of things. But because it's at the door frame there is no way to install quarter round.

Is there anyway for me to fix or hide this without getting a whole new wood floor or finding matching wood floors and recutting or refitting?

Answer 1

Now that we can see what you are talking about, the solution is thicker moulding. That is just a poor flooring install. The correct way to do it is to remove the base moulding, install the flooring (leaving the 3/8" expansion gap), then replace the base moulding to cover the gap.

If you don't want to take the original mouldings off (this installer clearly did not), the customary way is to add a second moulding (usually quarter-round) to close the gap.

Doing a door casing is trickier as you don't usually want to remove it. The correct way is to undercut the casing so you can slide the flooring under it, concealing the gap. The person who installed your floor didn't do that either.

To fix it after the fact, you have two options. You can replace the door casing with something thicker, or caulk that little wedge gap with grey caulk so it isn't so visible.

Answer 2

The traditional way to hide the junction between floors and walls is baseboards. If you already have baseboards, installing thicker ones, or "shoe moldings" might be worth considering.

The traditional way to hide floor junctions in a doorway is a wooden threshold piece, cut to fit the door opening. You may need to take a bit off the bottom of the door if there isn't space for this. If there's already a threshold and it doesn't suffice, you may need to take it up and fit a new one.

Or you may have a problem these don't solve. It would be hugely helpful if you edited the question to include photos of the problem areas.

Addition: If you really detest thresholds, you could take a router and chisels and excavate out a pocket that would permit dropping in a new board for a flush fit. But as complexity of the solution goes up, so does cost, effort, or both. Pick yer pisen.