Interior door installation
New interior doors change how a house feels faster than almost anything else you can buy for the money. They also punish sloppy work, because a door hung a degree out of plumb announces itself every time somebody walks past. We hang slab and prehung doors as part of our door repair service, set plumb, bored clean and cased tight to the wall.
Slab or prehung, and which one your opening wants
A slab is the door alone, hung on your existing jamb and hinges. A prehung arrives already mounted in a new frame. Slabs suit sound openings and cost less. Prehung units suit openings where the jamb has split, racked or been painted into a shape no door will fit. We measure the opening before quoting, because the difference between the two is the difference between a morning and a day.
What a prehung unit actually solves
A prehung door brings its own plumb with it. That matters in older houses where the rough opening drifted decades ago and every slab hung in it inherits the lean. It also brings new hinges, a fresh strike and a jamb that has never been painted shut. The trade is that the casing comes off, so the trim around the opening gets replaced, which our trim carpentry crew handles in the same visit.
Boring a slab without splitting the stile
Hardware holes look simple until one wanders. A slab gets bored with a jig so the cross bore and the edge bore meet square, and the latch mortise is cut to depth rather than chiselled by eye. On hollow-core doors the lock block is only a few inches wide, so the bore has to land on it. Getting that wrong ruins a door that is otherwise fine.
The floor is never flat, and it changes the reveal
Floors in this region run out of level by a quarter inch across a doorway more often than not, and a door hung to the frame rather than the floor will show a wedge of light underneath. We set the gap for the floor as it is, allow for carpet or a rug that is going back down, and check the swing across the whole arc before the hinges are fastened.
Hollow core, solid core and what you hear through them
Hollow-core doors are light, cheap and let conversation through. Solid-core doors weigh three times as much, cut noise noticeably and need hinges fastened into framing rather than into trim. Bedrooms off a shared hallway and any door onto a home office are where the upgrade earns its keep. Closets and pantries rarely justify it.
Doors for closets, pantries and laundry rooms
Closet openings are their own category, because the door is often bifold or bypass rather than swinging. If yours jump the track, that is pocket and bifold door repair rather than a new slab. When the whole closet is being reworked, the door usually follows the closet shelving layout rather than leading it.
Casing, and why trim decides whether it looks new
Most people cannot tell you why a newly hung door looks wrong, but they can see it. The answer is almost always the casing: mitres that have opened, a reveal that wanders along the jamb, or caulk filling a gap that should have been cut out. We set an even reveal, glue and pin the mitres and leave the joint ready for paint.
Matching a door to plaster-era openings
Older houses across Washtenaw and Wayne counties carry deep jambs, thick plaster returns and doors that are not the sizes a lumberyard stocks. Some openings take a stock door with an extension jamb. Others want a slab ordered wide and trimmed down to fit. Where the original doors survive, keeping them and correcting the jamb usually beats replacing them, and we say so.
Hardware, handing and the way a door should swing
Handing is decided on the visit rather than in the order. A door that swings into a light switch, blocks a radiator or crowds a stair landing is the sort of thing you live with for twenty years. If the house is getting matching hardware, this is the moment for lever handle conversion or new locks and deadbolts rather than a second visit later.
What happens to your old doors
Old doors leave with the crew unless you want them. Solid panel doors from an older house are worth keeping even if they are not going back in the opening, and plenty of homeowners have us set them aside for a table, a headboard or a future room. Hollow-core doors are not worth storing.
- Prehung units, installed plumb with new casing set both sides
- Slab doors hung on sound existing jambs and hinges
- Hardware bored and mortised, knob or lever fitted
- Doors trimmed for new flooring or a rug going back down
- Old doors removed, or set aside where you want them kept
When a new door is the wrong answer
If the door binds only in summer, sticks at one corner or rattles in the stop, you may need an adjustment rather than a replacement. That is a much shorter visit, and it is covered on our door adjustment page. Rental turnovers are the common exception, where replacing a battered slab outright is faster than repairing it and shows better to the next tenant. That work sits in rental turnover repairs.
Lead paint in openings from an older era
Removing casing or planing a painted jamb in a house built before nineteen seventy-eight can disturb lead-based paint, and federal rules require a certified firm to follow specific work practices for that work. We raise it before the day rather than after, so the plan accounts for it. Tell us the age of the house when you call.
How long a houseful of doors takes
One door is a short visit. Six to eight prehung units through a whole floor is a two-day job once casing and paint-ready finishing are counted, and it goes faster when the doors are ordered and on site before the crew arrives. We measure every opening first rather than assuming they match, because in older houses they almost never do, and a single wrong order stalls the whole run.
Fire-rated and garage doors are a separate question
The door between a house and an attached garage carries a code requirement that ordinary interior doors do not, and it is one of the items an inspector looks for. We fit rated units where that applies rather than hanging a panel door and hoping. If an inspection has already flagged yours, that item usually travels with home inspection repairs.
Homeowners often ask whether to do the whole floor at once or a room at a time. Doing it in one run costs less per door, because the setup, the measuring and the trim work all happen once. Doing it room by room spreads the cost and is easier to live around with children in the house.
Book interior door installation
Doors are one of the few upgrades where the material cost is modest and the result is felt daily. View our Portfolio for the finish our carpenters hold, then contact us now for a free quote. If the doors are going in alongside paint, ask about sequencing with interior painting so the casing is cut in once rather than twice.
