How to Frame Eyebrow Arches, Half Circle Arches, or Elliptical Arches to Create an Arched Doorway

www.arch-rite.com

Have you been thinking about adding an arch to one of your doorways as a way to add pizzazz to your home? You are not alone. The addition of archways as a home remodeling project is one of the latest trends in do-it-yourself fixer-up projects. If you´ve been thinking about this, a few things to consider:

1. Will you be doing it yourself, or will you be hiring a handyman or a skilled carpenter?

2. If doing it your-self, how skilled are you?

3. What is your budget?

4. What style are you interested in: eyebrow arches, elliptical arches, or half-circle arches.

Probably the easiest archway you can add is converting a three foot square doorway into a three foot arched doorway. It doesn´t get much simpler. From here you move up in complexity to a wide (say eight foot) room transition and finally to an arched hallway or ceiling. Let´s take the easy one first and look at the three foot doorway.

For years, the traditional way of installing an arch in this doorway has been to utilize what´s called a "plywood plug" in the construction trade. This involves drawing the radius you want on a piece of plywood (there are tools you can buy to help you scribe a perfect radius), and cutting it out with your circular saw. You need to do this twice so you get two pieces of plywood that you can nail together separated by short pieces of 2 x 4´s so the archway (plug) is the depth of the arched opening. You then nail this plug up in the opening and you have your arch. The down-side of the above procedure is that it is very time consuming, costly (two pieces of plywood and a 2 x 4) and the quality can be less than desired if you don´t cut the arch perfectly. This is one reason that most low-end and mid-priced homes don´t have many arches (high cost and labor intensive).

Fortunately, in today´s world there are several commercially available products you can buy that will give you a quality arch at a reasonable price. By my count, there are four suppliers of metal arches, one supplier of foam arches, one supplier of plastic arches and one supplier of wood arches. Out of all of them, I found the wood arches the easiest to use and the most reasonably priced. The wood arches are sold by a reliable company (Arch-Rite®), and are easy to order on-line. They are the only company to list their pricing for standard sizes on-line and will ship their standard products within one business day. The arches come with detailed installation instructions and it only takes 5 minutes and $29.95 to install a 3 ft doorway arch vs. an all day hassle to do a plywood plug.

My advice is to check out their web-site for your-self: www.arch-rite.com