Went to Lowes yesterday. Yeah, I’m back on the Lowes rant. I had to purchase 2 interior doors so I bought the normal Luan capped slabs: one was pre-bored and one was not. Note: The reason I got the one that wasn’t pre bored is because I needed a 30 1/4” door and the closest I could get is a 32” so I knew I would have to cut through the hollow and reinstall the edge. Normally, it’s not a hard feat to do and I do it all the time especially when the heights don’t match but this time, it took me about 3 hours because why? The door isn’t really what a Luan door normally is but about a 64th” of real wood pressed onto cardboard. The only REAL wood is the 1” piece that edges the door. Now, figure this out for me. Both doors are hollow core and both were the same measurements and produced by the same company. They are exactly the same except one is bored for the knob and bolt. You’d think that the one that is prepped for the knob would be the more expensive but nope. $79 for the plain and $54 for the bored. Basically, my rant is that the quality of slabs that I used to get for about $60 a piece was 100% better than the higher priced crap that I was forced to buy yesterday. Me thinks I’m going to start making my own doors and charging a little more for quality. The stuff I’m going to install is just plain embarrassing and won’t last past the first shoe that misses hubby and hits the door when his wife gets tired of picking up his underwear.
When I worked with that non-profit, we would get reclaimed doors for this very reason. We had one rotted exterior door that was an odd size (at what used to be the caretaker's house built in the 30s, now just a regular deeded residence, smack in the middle of a cemetery!) and when I went looking for a "solid core" door, I found out that these are not a single piece of wood. They are blocks of compressed sawdust--arranged much like a brick sidewalk would be laid out--sandwiched between two thin outer panels. You cannot trim them to fit. I've attached the spec sheet I got from the manufacturer. Your rant pretty much affirms why most of us buy used stuff, huh? There is no pride anymore. Regarding the missus getting tired of picking up underwear: if she were really tired of it, she'd stop picking it up (said the single guy.)
I picked up a door blank...actually one of my sons picked it up as a discontinued thing at his place of employment (He works at a builders supply place). It was solid core with maple facing. The core was pressed something--1 inch particle board maybe--and weighed a ton. I cut it to size and fit it to my downstairs bathroom door, which is trimmed in maple. My idea was to make a mini "panic room" for the wife should she need the extra 30 seconds a solid door would provide. It has worked well but the weight pulled at the hinges during the earthquake I have mentioned before as it was open when it occurred. I have been looking for an exterior door that I can use for my attic access (which now has a hollow-core interior door). It is an access to an unheated space, so I think an exterior door would be better. It is only 28" wide, however, and I haven't found an exterior door I wanted that was that narrow and shorter than normal as well. I don't have the talent you have @Bobby Cole to make one from scratch.
Raised panel solid core doors are actually pretty easy to make but it takes the right equipment which thankfully I already have. That said, the rave right now is the barn door look complete with the railings. I can’t say much about the sound reduction aspect but they do look nice in kind of a rustic way. The one pictured below could easily go for around $600+.
I don't get the whole barn door craze. That one pictured looks totally out of place in that house; it's better suited for a log cabin... or an actual barn.
I don’t know either but they’re selling like hotcakes. Maybe it’s a kind of East meets West sort of a thing. She can have the African Violet lamp shades, the tangerine walls, the dusk blue comforter and the disco ball in the living room and he gets barn doors.
Which starts another rant. What the blankety-blank do people think they’re doing with all the weird paint? It’s probably my fault for allowing people to paint the rooms however they wish (at their expense) but the last folks I rented to painted the entire kitchen purple and when I say purple I mean P U R P L E !! They even painted a $130 chopping block counter top…..PURPLE ! Who in their right mind would want to put food of any kind on a painted surface? Granted, the counter top needed work but all I would have had to do is to either sand it or flip it over and bingo…brand new. Stupid people. I hope they stay current on their rent and keep things in order cause that’s one coverup paint job I don’t want to do any time soon.
I have two of them. One on my porch because the porch framework isn't strong enough for a more solid door and I've lost a couple of screen doors because the first time someone doesn't close it all the way, the wind takes it away. I have another one in the room where I've recently moved my office because it's the most practical type of door that I could find to use there. The entrance to the room is immediately to the left of our front door, and there's barely enough space for a doorframe. Thus, a regular door won't open wide enough to fit furniture through and I am tired of removing doorframes every time I get a large package from Amazon.
I like pocket doors, but have never lived in a house that had a spot where a set might even fit, much less go with the style.
Actually, let me correct this. I just recalled that you can trim them, but only as a final adjustment. We needed to take off several inches, and that cannot be done.
They go with that stupid dull finish plank flooring! Everyone here is putting that in, mostly in grey. I do happen to have real maple flooring in my barnhouse and a barn door in front of the barn.-- three actually. If I were to put plank flooring in our house, it would be HIGH gloss finish. The barnhouse I had the floor sanded down and stained with deck stain and there is a lot of history left in the stains from over 100 years of abuse.