Good eve to all,
I’m looking to renovate my hovel of a residence and would like to replace all of my hollow core luan (aka – stained cardboard) doors. The jambs are 1-1/4″ stained clear pine in great shape. Trim is 2-1/2 inch colonial moulding that I’d also like to replace with what I do not know yet.
Assuming I will hire a contractor for this work, my questions are: what type of cost premium, if any, should I expect if I replace the doors only with solid pine versus replacing the entire door with solid pine and attached (split?) casings and mouldings?
I would like to keep what I consider better or more substantial quality where I can and replace the junk from the 60s but, as usual, money talks. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Just remember, be gental in your response, I’m a sparkie and I might actually help one of you big strong lumberjacks in another post.
Replies
It will be cheaper to replace the entire door unit if you are wanting the replace the trim and door.
I agree with Paulparadis. Since you want to change the door trim, it would be an easier task to then go ahead and tear out the entire door unit...jamb and all. Then, simply install a prehung unit of appropiate size back in place.
This would be a lot less time consuming than to buy a bunch of slab doors, and then have to drill holes for locksets, and then route out hinge locations. Unless your doors are not standard sizes or you have very wide jambs or something that would make buying pre-hungs a "special order" job...pre-hung is definately the way to go.
Even though pre-hung unit jambs are normally only 3/4 inch thick ( in some cases...5/8 thick) it will still do the job of supporting your new door. I mention this because you seem to like the fact that your existing door jambs are much thicker. Bottom line...no matter how thick your jambs are, they will still be hidden behind the installed door casing...only the "reveal" line will show.
Davo
If the old doors are standard size and square, then putting in a new door in the old jam is a piece of cake (make sure the carpenter is using a jig, like the Bosch unit, or he will take 4x as long to do the job)
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
color me ignorant
Bosch Jig? Are you referring to their hinge mortise jig of something else?
The Bosch jig is a despicable dance that takes place very late at night in dirty bars.
Baseboard been VERRRY good to me
Yes, most of those hinge-jig systems allow you to lock in the hinge positions from the jamb and then quickly transfer them to the new door. You pretty much have to do this because the old hinge spacing can be arbitrary. You'll be wanting to use the hinge jig to cut a mortise for a third hinge in the jamb anyway..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
The jambs sound great...if you get prehung doors with clear pine 1 1/4" jambs, you will be paying more for the new clear pine than you would to get new doors and have them fit to your existing jambs. Any carpenter worth their pay can fit a new door to an old jamb without a lot of headache. (Unless they're an odd size, like 31 or 33")
Jennifer
Man, you need to get bids from these folks that are intimating it's a simple matter to put a new door in an old hole. Phill, when was the last time you did a house full of these? And while a Bosch hinge jig does a good job on new work, I find this stuff much easier with a homemade jig.
You didn't say what you wanted to replace the old hollow cores with. Lugging solid cores around until they fit in a finished house is a two person job. Wooden six panels are easier and hollow cores are even easier. I charge 50 bucks to put in a new hollow core door with three hinges with lock bores and hardware and cleanup. 100 bucks for solid (particleboard w/ veneer)core. You want to have the casing replaced , an excellent idea if you're going with solid core replacements, because shims will probably be needed. Along with the put in a third hinge variable, there will also be the matter of getting the doors to hit the stops and also not be hinge bound...as you can see , its a real piece of cake. It is a worthwhile thing to do, but it isn't easy ,and it isn't cheap. And, just because someone has a Bosch hinge jig doesn't mean they'll do a good job, Porter Cable makes a jig too, buy American, eh Philll?<G> EliphIno!
I find the reverse for the jigs - the home-made ones are okay for new; but, not so good at matching existing hinge placements unless it's a pretty exotic jig. .
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
A couple pieces of plywood ,a 2x2, and two clamps, about as exotic as a toothless convenience store checkout girl! EliphIno!
And 1 person can hold the 2-by vertically in a door-jamb, align the top to the top of the frame, position the ply with the cut-out properly over the hinge stub on the jamb, and work the clamp, and maintain verticle alignment for all three templates ? I gotta see that !.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Phill-boy, we're rehanging new doors in old jambs, at least that's what I'm doing here, so there's no wresting with jigs on jambs. It does take two people to wrestle 100lb. doors around an occupied house, especially a two or three story, without dinging something up. And, as fantastic as your planes, trains and automobiles analogies, how bout something a bit more apropos: do you see any difference in hanging 2 doors that weigh in at 100# each versus 20 doors at 100lb. each? At the end of the day, this old boy does. Sometimes I wonder if you've ever actually done a real day's work;-) EliphIno!
I dont know what Phill said as I have him on ignore. I can say I hung a number of pine solid core doors in exsisting jambs. Its no biggie. I use the mortises on the jambs. I just take the old door off and scribe wear the old mortises were on to the new door and mortise and hang. No biggie
At Darkworks Customer satisfaction Job One..Yea yea were all over it , I ll have it done by next Tuesday Oh yea I need another draw.........
Billy, I said plainly in my first response that I had replaced some doors in some houses: you responded that this response meant that I had done zero. That's where the analogy comes from Billy, some is some; I don't have to do ALL the doors in a house to have done some.
If something's heavy, you need help to lift it - so what's your point with that ? The jig is used to transfer the hinge position from the jamb to the door; the weight of the door does not change this..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Actually, Phill, my point was that you don't know what you're talking about. Simple enough for you? EliphIno!
BB, haven't you noticed that Phill knows about everything? He's been a mountain climber, race car driver, track steward, international banker, heavy equipment operator, pilot, and apparently he's also quite the handy man.
I'm often amazed reading his posts to find yet another career he's had. I think once upon a time someone mentioned Phillll must be several hundred years old to have packed so much experience into one life.
Good buddy of Gabe's too I think.
Pay attention and you'll learn more from Philll.
Joe H
And, he's a scuba diving, doorhanging, travel agent...he is fun to mess with, though... he get's pretty tweaked;-)
I don't even want to think about Phill and Gabe as buddies. Scary! EliphIno!
No, never been a banker, the rest is pretty standard stuff for any moderately active person..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
I kind of like the idea of this guy's 1 1/4 in. jambs. And I'm in agreement about the job of hanging new doors not being that much different than installing prehungs--if the door installer is setup and properly experienced. Of course, if you can't find someone in your area who is experienced at hanging new doors in old jambs--can knock out say 10 in a day--then I'd go the prehung route. Lots of carpenters these days can't afford the time and investment it takes to specialize enough in door hanging so they're able to invest in the tools and the experience. That's one reason a lot of New Doors aren't hung in OLD JAMBS. Where I live, it's done ALL the time. We go for weeks where are crews are doing nothing but hanging new four-panel doors in place of slab or luan doors, just as this fellow has in mind. We frequently leave the casing, though we often replace it, too, and the base, etc.
The nice thing about re-hangs is that there's very little mess inside the house. All the cutting, planing, drilling, and mortising is done at the door bench. Billy's right, doors must be carried to the opening twice--once to scribe, once to hang in place., but I thought that being a carpenter meant you agreed to being a manual labor mule?
As for the Bosch template, yeah, it beats the PC hands down, and it's great for doing a housefull of new doors in existing jambs...BUT if the hinge layouts very, phooey on the expensive template. A single-hinge template will do just as good.
Sorry for stumbling in...
Gary
No actual door hangers needed here. All amateurs BSing away about it. I sold my PC planer to Splintergroupie so she could ruin doors too.
Joe H
Thanks for the opinions. I didn't think it would generate so much...discussion. I'd like to keep the jambs and anything else in the house that is heavier, better, stronger but it may ultimately it comes down to money. Since there appears to be a definte division of opinion, I suspect I will allow the chosen contractor the option of which method to use so long as the end product is not of lesser quality than what is currently installed.
And as far as selling the old jambs on Ebay, maybe I'll just work them into some decorative shelving so they don't end up in a landfill.
Thanks for your responses.
Aside from all the BS, if these were my jambs, I'd put the new doors in the old jambs. You probably aren't going to buy what you have, especially if price is a consideration. It ain't rocket science either way.
Although it seems like it after you've screwed one up. How did I do that backwards?
Joe H
My opinion is that it could be pretty much of a wash either way. If you were keeping the casings, I'd probably opt for new slabs in the old jambs, especially if the only new prehungs I could get would be split jambs - I won't touch them. That saves a lot of painting cost to leave all that rim as is.
But when you begin to think about taking casings off anyway, there are other issues added into the decision. There is a maxim in remodeling that when you change one thing, everything starts to change.
Many carpenters hang doors with no shims or attachment to the jack stud. They let the casings do the work of holding the unit in place. That can work for hollow core but not always for heavy solid wood doors. The old jambs may need to be reset anyway. That means it could definitely be less expensive to plan to hang prehungs from the beginning.
Then, if the new casings will be wider than the existing, you have to be able to cut back the baseboards with something like a Bosch finish/flush trim saw without marking up the flooring or walls. The other thing about wider casings is that in a house not designed for them, you will end up having to make several rips and making them look bad in back corners.
BTW guys, I only hang about four doors a day when I am doing transfers like this and protect the house walls and floor from damage but I don't do it every day like Gary either.
.
Excellence is its own reward!
Yeah we don't do it every day either. But as new work trim carps, the bulk of our fussy work is hanging doors. Remodels are a different can of worms. In an occupied house, two of us are lucky to get 8 solid cores into old holes in a day. It's amazing how much time it takes moving furniture, putting hooks and mirrors and hardware back on, tweaking, and just being clean and careful!
Whitman, in your case, if the old doors work ok, I'd want to rehang new doors in the old holes, too. Remove the trim on the hinge side of one and see if it's shimmed. If it is, I'd think about leaving the trim, unless it's totally objectionable. Replacing the casing usually leads to other work, as suggested above...just didn't want you to think that it's easy as pie;-)
EliphIno!
Gary,
Are you allowed to post here? Just kidding. You have a point if a carpenter is used to hanging slabs in openings it would be SOP. In my part of the woods the jamb is pulled and a prehung goes in. It is all driven by customer expectations.
Hi Paul. Yeah, I wondered if it was kosher to be expressing an opinion here, too. So I asked Andy and he said it was Okey Dokey.
Gary
Haven't done a housefull at a time Billy, but I have done a few at a time and also put doors into steel frames in apartments, which is basically the same problem..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Actually Phill, since you haven't really done it, you are only assuming it's basically the same. Lots of posters here just like you, you don't have to answer every question, try doing just the ones you have first hand experience with...now again, tell this guy how easy it is;-) EliphIno!
Well, you're going to have to explain to me again why doing this for a couple of doors in each of several houses is so vastly different than doing ALL the doors in a single house Billy. It must take some very convoluted logic to say that one can't say they've done this unless they've done ALL the doors in a house - how does, say 1/2 the doors in a house equate to zero in your mind. I suppose next you're going to tell us that unless you've on all the highways in North America you've never driven on a highway ? Or unless you've flown in every airplane of every airline you've never taken an airline flight ? .
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Phil,
Your logic never ceases to amaze me. I have never meet a smarter person in my life.
I would consider it a waste to use 1 1/4" material for a jamb on a new door and a little over-kill, 3/4" will do just fine for most doors. Although a decent carpenter can do the work, it would be cheaper to hang prehung. Remodel work is time consuming and that carpenter worth his pay - has to be paid.
IMO To do it yourself, it would depend on whether you had the tools or not. If you already had the tools then it would be more cost effective to hang them on the existing jabs. If you dont then hire someone. Around here you can get a interior door hung for about 70 bucks labor plus materials. If you dont want to keep the old look of the house by keeping the orignal jambs then get a prehung. ive seen them at the home Dil^& in various sizes.
At Darkworks Customer satisfaction Job One..Yea yea were all over it , I ll have it done by next Tuesday Oh yea I need another draw.........
If you choose to remove the old jambs, please try to find someone who loves the wood and give them the old jambs. Maybe you could sell them on e-Bay!
Old growth wood should always be treated as valuable. Just try to go out and buy some.
Hasbeen