Replacing old doors with Higher Quality Panel Slab Doors
Getting slab doors is a great alternative to tearing out superior door frames that have nothing wrong with them.
Tearing out the door frame would require a lot more work. To pull the door frames would require removing trimming and escalate to other projects like a full repaint of the areas the doors frames are removed from. Odds are while trying to remove 70 year plus trimming pieces with many decades and layers of paint that basically glued them to the wall, during removal you'll most likely jack up your wall paint around doorways. In this case slabs are a great alternative to repainting the whole house when it's not needed.
Below I am using a water based exterior poly on interior doors hoping that it will hold up as well as commercial grade polyurethane if not better and also add additional UV protection.
When prepping for door coatings it's important to beware of lies from manufacturers. When they say solid oak doors they are most likely lying. If you over sand the doors you may burn through the Oak appearance.
Proceed with Caution. These doors being made today are inferior to the ones made back in the day. They are not solid oak anymore. veneered MDF in places. That's a 200.00 mistake.
Here I have thinned the poly a bit so that I can spray through an automotive spray gun.
I'm doing 3 coats of poly with sanding and tack cloth usage between coats.
Next step is using router to cut your hinge slots. Ryobi makes some great jigs for cutting all your door cuts needed from hinges to door handle/latch and lock sets.
Now if you had your door bottoms cut for 1960's - 70's Shag carpet you will want to find the top of the doors and align them off the tops. This will get your proper hinge placement. Use a square to align doors from top edge. Then use your square to mark locations of the hinges. For next step you will use your hinge cutting jig and router bit that came with the kit. Kit comes with adjustable template for various hinge size and type and also comes with router bit and self-centering drill bit to pre-drill hinge holes with.
This jig works great but before you fully clamp down you need to tap off clamp surfaces and, in this case, add a piece a cardboard to protect your door finish from the screw on the clamp surface or it will mark the door.
when clamping I've had this flex just a bit and this screw mark the door.
Hear I put painters' tape and a piece of cardbaord
Now the corners you will still have to cut with a chisel by hand.
If you have 1950's hinges your hinges maybe narrow but you will most likely need the bigger thicker depth that is used for much bigger hinges. This is because the stuff built in the 50's is far superior to today's offerings. Save and reuse the old stuff. When installing a slab door and reusing the door frames you have to use your original hinges because of the gapping and crack spacing. Newer hinges are much thinner today. Using a newer hinge set with a frame cut for thicker hinge will require very thin shims to be added, which is more hassle than just using your originals.
Some testing will be required after installation.
In my case I had to repostion interior door stops about an 1/8 of an inch.
Once I found the correct position of the stops I reinstalled them.
Once repositioned i focused on finding the doorknob and latch location using another Ryobi Installation jig which requires no tape measure to use.
This kit helps you find exactly where your knob and latches should be on the door after installed.
No tape measure required.
As you can see here, I have taped the door to protect finished surfaces again.
Also, I would note that you should not try doing the installation till your coatings have fully cured.
Once you have your holes drilled you will again need to do some chisel work. Take care when doing this. Ryobi also has another jig for assisting in getting correct dimensions of plat for the latch.
After all dimensions are correct and testing fitting has been complete you can finally assemble the door handle and latch assembly.
This is just one of the 7 completed but steps are virtually the same for all of them. Take care and don't rush the job.
These jigs were excellent.
