Has anyone installed new slab doors themselves?

[my4girls]

I'm going back and forth between attempting it ourselves or hiring someone to do it. We're replacing the old luan doors throughout our house- 15 total. Thoughts? How hard is it, if you've done it? Any tips? We're pretty handy but never done doors before


thanks!

[kaylie]

We haven't, but I'll be watching this thread because I'm very tempted to replace ours.

[mrsd2006]

I have no idea what a slab door or what a luan door is.... Off to do some googling

[my4girls]

A slab door is just the door- doors come either slab or prehung. Slab you have to carve the spots for hinges and bore a doorknob hole.

Luan doors are just cheap ugly doors from the 70s. Hollow and brown

[bunnymendelbaum]

Are you doing pre-hung or just the slabs?
How old is your house?

I ask because in older houses where things are less square, hanging doors can be a nightmare. DH and I installed two pre-hung exterior doors in our old house and it almost ended our marriage. We laugh about it now, but it was so stressful. (Exterior doors are much harder and our house was from 1920.)

[my4girls]

Just the slab

[Susie]

We're planning to do it throughout the house; so far we've done one (the front hall closet door).  We also have luan doors throughout, and are replacing them with solid pine 6-panel doors.

I'm not gonna lie, it's a PITA.  We're going to DIY because my dad helped us through the first one and built us a jig to use with the router for the hinges.  Without his help, it's not something I'd be able to DIY.  The other thing is that it is really time consuming.  You need to hang the door, then take it down and paint it.  You can't paint first because you often need to plane the edges, etc. to make it fit correctly.  Routing the doors for the hinges can be done sort of assembly-line, but most of the other parts need to be done one door at a time.  It all adds up to having a house that looks pretty "in progress" for quite some time, depending on how much focus you can put into the project.

Pre-hung is a PITA in a different way (we've done that recently for 2 exterior doors) so I don't think that saves that much effort.  As between DIYing slab and hiring it out?  It $ wasn't an object, I'd hire it out.  x15 is going to get really tedious.  But I have no idea how much it'd run to have done, and I don't have "a guy" for stuff like that.

[mrspez07]

It sucks.
We did 3 about 5-6 years ago and still have 1 or 2 I the garage yet to be hung. DH hated the doors that came with the 1979 house, so we took the 3 bedroom doors down and put up new ones. They all close differently, and some are harder to open than others. Don't love the results, (but they work), and that's why the others are still unhung.
We may have a handyman do the other some day.

[sawyerthedestroyer]

We have found that having a butt marker (for real, that's what it's called), a door knob hole kit, and a table saw make it easier. The butt marker and door knob kit are cheap, the table saw, not so much.

[simpsongal]

we hired it out - had 12-13 or so solid core MDF doors replace the hollow ugly ones. Susie, I admire you ambition. I think this job is worth hiring it.

I think it cost us like $3K but the doors look soooooo much better.

[my4girls]

yeah the more I read about it the more apprehensive I become about trying to tackle it ourselves. but gah it's so much money to install them! lord. I have calls in to get a few quotes this week

[pixy0stix]

We had 2 doors replaced, but we used repurposed solid wood doors that we got from a salvage store. We didn't have to drill anything. It took my husband and another guy who hangs doors for a living a couple of hours for just those 2 doors.

[meggers]

We just started this project and have finished three doors so far. When we purchased them at Lowe's, we had the option to have them drill the door handle hole (yes please) and the hinge area. I opted against the latter because I didn't have the measurements with me at the time. They came with them done anyway. In completely the wrong places. It ended up being ok since we had to trim 1/8-1/4" off of the side anyway. The whole process is a pain re: the little adjustments but doable.