I am in the construction phase of my basement/home theatre and there was no way around it but to have the door opening into a bedroom under duct work, making the door shorter than normal.

My question is, how do I finish the top trim for the door without the expense of making the door even shorter to allow for the width of the trim?

Would you make the door shorter (ie. 6 ft) to accomodate the trim?

or..

Do you use a little piece of trim to cover off the door frame and have it look somewhat awkward having the top trim piece not match the vertical pieces?

Any help on a decision or any other solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

How much room do you have on top?

This probably best illustrates what you need to fit together. See the top case molding. Just modify the top casing to fit. You can use the same molding as the other doors for the side casing pieces. Even it the top piece is a 1x1 it will look OK.

http://www.rd.com/images/tfhimport/2003/20031101_Craftsman_Trim_page004img003.jpg

Picture would help.

I would have the top trim narrower than the vertical trim rather than lower the door frame.

Nobody will notice the mismatched trim. Everybody (even the people shorter than 6') will notice the required ducking.

I would suggest going with the narrowest trim reasonable on all sides to minimize the difference, and then consider doing a different trim on the top (maybe a bit of narrow carved wood trim instead of traditional casing)

By the way, because double drywall narrowed my entryway, I had to do custom trim widths on all sides. The right side is about 1/2" narrower than the top is wide. Totally not noticeable, I'd actually forgotten about it until I saw your post.

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z196/pgmeyer/avspics/DSC_0671-1.jpg

I have a door to a bedroom in my house where they just sliced off 3/4 of an inch on the right side against a wall. I don't think I even noticed it until I had been in the house a couple of years.

If you just need to slice off a half an inch or so off the top I'd say try it.

Check out the pictures in this build thread. His doors seem to have a nice trim look but still appear to have maximized the height, and they were professionally done.

http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=386540&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

If you're already low, I wouldn't take the door down any lower just to have the standard 2 1/4" trim. I'd consider doing something like the picture in that thread with the grafik eye next to the door.

I agree, I would not lower the door height at all (of course I'm also 6'7"). I think narrow trim on top and standard width trim on the sides would look OK and not be too noticeable.

I had a somewhat similar situation for one of my doors - ductwork ran above about half the width of the door. I built a soffit around it, which then left room for only about 1" wide trim under the soffit. I used regular width trim and just cut out the portion of the top trim piece so it fit perfectly around the soffit. I was happy with how it looked. Unfortunately I don't have a picture handy right now.

I also had the same dilema for trim around small window well windows that were just below the ceiling. I think for those I did end up cutting the trim down to an inch or so wide all the way around, but I know I debated about it quite a while.