How do I replace the front door on a stucco house?

Question

I'm going to be taking out the various floors that have been laid in our house down to the sub floor so wood flooring can be laid. But in doing so the floor will be about 1 inch lower than what it was and the front door will have a gap at the bottom. The jamb is standard size and my plan is to replace the entire unit with a prehung door.

The problem is, I really don't want to have to patch the stucco around the door jamb. I've been reading on how to do it and one site had a door installer provide the steps he uses. I just want to run them by here to make sure it is doable.

• Remove door and interior trim
• Cut nails holding jamb to frame with a reciprocating saw
• Carefully separate jamb from stucco mold, this should push the jamb inside the house.
• Cut the nails in the stucco mold
• Install the new door and re-nail the stucco mold back to the new jamb.

If that is doable, the other question I have is, should I install the new floor before I install the front door?

Answer 1

I've finished pulling the old door and jam out and installing the new one. The method did work but was a bit harder than I thought. First, my front door jams where nailed flush to the framing with no shims making getting the saw in there pretty hard. Because of that, the stucco moding did seperate from the stucco some but no bad, I will need to go back and patch those cracks.