DIY advice needed - how do we plane a door?

[melpomene]

We need to cut 0.5cm or so off the bottom of dd1's bedroom door because a new carpet has been fitted and the door won't fit over the carpet. Dh has borrowed an electric plane, but neither of us knows much about DIY so we're not clear on how to proceed.

If I understand correctly, the surface being planed has to be horizontal - so that means the door has to be upright. Do you just have to stand on a ladder to reach the top of it, or is there any other option? Very conveniently, when I searched for advice all the pix/videos I found on the net only show the side of a door being planed, not the top/bottom.

We have also read stuff about the risk of the corner of the door being torn off, and having to put other pieces of wood next to the door to prevent that. Is that a necessity?

Any other tips? Help, please!

I am afraid we have never used an electric plane. Could he get some advice from theperson he borrowed it from? We got a cheap tool from B&Q which is like a cross between a hand plane and a file. It only cost about £5 and I would highly recommend it. We were worried about taking too much off/needing a degree of skill with a 'proper plane'.

I think much less skill is needed with this tool.

When DP did it he put the door with the long length on hte floor and planned downwards to the middle, turn the door over and repeat. It is a little uneven cos doing it this was it is easy to take more of hte middle than the edges, so you do have to be a bit careful WRT getting a straight line. Maybe you could mark a straight line on first?

Take a nit off at a time and then check the fit. You can always take a bit more off if you need to, but you can't put it back on.

I think you'd need to take the door out of it's hinges and do it separately and then hang it back. No idea if that's correct, though.

I guess if you have a tressel table kind of thing you could lay the door flat on that and then plane outwards from the centre to the edges (like You do when filing nails), would probably be much more even. I wouldn't try standing on a ladder TBH.

Thanks for the tips. We ended up clamping it into a workbench with the long edge downwards. It took a long time to do, but dh got it pretty straight in the end. A chunk got chipped off the corner of the door, but we have filled it with Polyfilla. Our house (and dh) are now covered in sawdust.