Beaten and chewed up doors and frames
Hi all, A good number of our interior doors are in bad shape. They have had multiple locks and jams and various metal drilled into them -many times. We are looking into replacing them but are having a hard time because the doors are all non -standard–in fact every door seems to be a different…
Hi all, A good number of our interior doors are in bad shape. They have had multiple locks and jams and various metal drilled into them -many times. We are looking into replacing them but are having a hard time because the doors are all non -standard–in fact every door seems to be a different size. We even went to edddie’s are looked through his huge inventory for a couple of hours and found no luck. We would love to rehab them but we don’t know where to begin. Has anyone else had this problem? What have you done?
We’re in the same boat with our front doors. Can anyone please recommend the name and number of a carpenter?
Thank you all for your answers. 1:19 -do you happen to have any recs for a real carpenter. We have been working with one for a bit but he is young and maybe not as REAL as he pretends to be. And Brenda–Thank for the inspiration–always enjoy your posts.
Hey HomeSweetstuy, in the name of all that is holy, please completely ignore 9:35- regardless of intent.
What you need is something called a carpenter. In this case, you need a real one. Once you’ve found one, they can easily patch and repair your doors with WOOD of the same species (and preferably old growth- again, real carpenters will know about this). It’s certainly the greenest approach and it will give you much more satisfaction than any putty/resin/filler approach. It’s not free and not everyone can do it properly, but it’s definitely worth shooting for. Good luck.
If you’re willing to repaint your doors, you can salvage most of them through plastic surgery. We’ve had some really good carpenters over the years who shaved down doors, glued fattening edges onto doors, filled mortise holes and cylinder holes with wood or putty, etc., and then sanded that sucker flat; once it’s primed and painted, one is none the wiser. This approach is even more appealing the first time you ask a Typical Lowe’s Door Guy to give you a price quote on a 30-foot-high door (ok, I exaggerate only slightly) and he falls down laughing and explains that That’d be Custom, and then you get the quote from the Custom Door-Making Guy and it’s the price of your down payment. Our house was a boarding house, so all our doors got butchered over the years, and we’ve been able to salvage most of them. And we never throw any out!
HomeSweetstuy,
What are you going to do with your old doors. If your going to throw them away, I’ll take a couple. I suggest you try Demolition Depot in Harlem. The have about 1414 doors.
http://www.demolitiondepot.com/vo/demo/inv/ListCat2.asp?Cat1=Doors
-Mr. Renovation-
http://renovatingonthecheap.blogspot.com/search/label/Sanding
When I renovated my coop, I had a similar problem. I used Exclusive Doors on Flushing in W’burg for my door custom doors. I found them to be very professional and affordable.
You may want to consider a bigger job: changing the opening sizes to accomodate standard size doors. Althought this work will be more intrusive, it will give you the opportunity to unify the look through your house and you may save so much using standard size doors that may be worth it in the end. Good luck!