Adam and Kristen: The Doors

This is what our doors used to look like. Flat, golden oak color, dark brass door knobs, shiny brass hinges. I knew when we moved in almost three years ago, this was something I was going to change. I have always felt that panel doors look so much better than flat doors.

Our front door and our garage door were already both 6-panel doors, so I thought it best to stick to that scheme (I think I would have picked them anyway - they're classic). I toyed around with the idea of buying solid-core doors, at least for the bedrooms (to help reduce noise), but ultimately just went with hollow core panel doors throughout (much cheaper).

Fit jig over door and tighten it down, then route out the hinge

Depth gauge

Now, I'd heard that if you don't buy pre-hung doors, it can be difficult to get new doors to fit just right in old frames. So to help me with my endeavor, I purchased a couple of jigs. One, from Ryobi, to do the hinges. And one, from Irwin, to do the door locks / handles. The Ryobi tool was fantastic - it takes out all the guesswork. It comes with a router bit and a built-in depth gauge for it, and has positive stops to adjust the template for different-sized hinges. It also is able to do both rounded and square hinges (those rounded bits are removable inserts). All I did was line up the door I'd removed with the new door, drew some lines with a square to match them up, then used the router template to mortise out perfect slots for the new hinges. That made it super easy to do the hinges.

Irwin tool with hole saws

The Irwin tool wasn't as good as the Ryobi. I did the same thing: lining up the old and new doors and drawing lines, then attaching the jig. This one has two holes where you screw in the door lock screws to hold it in place. Then you use the included hole saws to cut the door handle space (starting the hole on both sides so you don't blow out the other side), then the door lock hole. The biggest issue was that the jig didn't stay put very well. To keep the holes lined up, punch the center drill bit through, then switch to the other side and ignore the jig, using the center hole as your guide instead. And having a drill bit that switches between the two hole saws isn't ideal, as those things can be difficult to separate from the hole saw. But the biggest issue was the plastic template that was included to cut out a space for the bolt plate. The router bit got so heated up in cutting the space, that it melted the plastic jig. I had to be really careful I didn't go outside where the original lines had been.

By the way, here's what happens if you screw up in measuring, and measure from the wrong end of the door. You accidentally drill the door handle hole in the wrong spot. This was a $31 mistake.

After I got a few doors on, I realized that my doors were slightly too wide, when compared to my original doors. So I pulled them off and planed them down slightly with a hand planer, then sanded them smooth. This was something I had to do even later on, when a couple of the doors started sticking (I ended up planing those in place, though).

I also tried painting the doors in place - not a great idea. It took too long and I had to tape everything, etc. So instead I took them off and painted them in the garage (though I did the shiny topcoats while they hung). I wanted to do something different than just white doors, and felt matching the doors to the other woodwork I've done in the house would look pretty good.

I used two coats of General Finishes brand milk paint. The Dark Chocolate color matches their Java Gel Stain, which I used on the cabinets and banister. Then I added a couple coats of Minwax Fast Drying Polyurethane Satin Finish for a topcoat.

For the hardware, I replaced the door knobs with satin nickel handles, and added matching hinges.

Here are some shots of the final products! I am really pleased with how they turned out.