Is there a way to widen my door frames just a tiny bit without a total renovation?

You're definitely looking at this from the wrong angle. You don't want to touch that door frame; widening a jamb is a nightmare that involves ripping out trim and potentially messing with the studs. The standard move here is to buy the 32 and 24-inch **slab doors** and trim the doors themselves down to fit your existing openings. Since you're selling the house, you're likely buying cheap hollow-core slabs, which usually have a solid wood stiles about an inch or two wide on the edges. You can easily shave off 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch without compromising the structure of the door. The tool you want for a low-mess, low-stress fix is a **hand plane**. You can pick up a basic block plane or a bench plane for twenty bucks. It curls the wood off in thin ribbons rather than creating a cloud of fine sawdust like a power saw would. Just mark your width, clamp the door on its side, and work the plane along the hinge side until you hit your measurement. If you have a bit more room in the budget, they make electric hand planes that do this in seconds, but for just four doors, the manual version is quieter and gives you more control.

Take the material off the hinge side rather than the lock side. If you trim too much off the lock side, your door handle and latch might not line up right with the strike plate on the frame. If you're swapping the old hinges over, use the old door as a template. Lay the new door on top of the old one, clamp them together, and you'll see exactly where you need to shave it down and where the hinges need to be mortised.

Don't forget to check the height too. Usually, those big box store doors are a standard 80 inches, but older houses often have settled. A quick pass with a circular saw on the bottom edge is usually necessary. Just do all your sanding and planing out in the garage or driveway if you can to keep the cleanup inside to a minimum. Once they're hung and painted, nobody will ever know they weren't custom-sized.

Listen to the guy above—don't touch those jambs unless you're looking for a divorce. I’ve hung more doors than I can count since the 70s, and trimming the slab is the only way to go. One trick the young guys forget is the back-bevel. Use a jack plane to shave the leading edge of the lock side at a slight 2 or 3-degree angle toward the inside. It stops the door from binding against the stop when it swings shut. I still reach for my old Stanley No. 5 for this. Makes a tight fit look like a pro did it without all the fuss of moving hardware.

Spot on. Trimming the slab is the way to go, especally with those funky non-standard widths. One tiny detail I’d add: before you start planing down the hinge side, check the thickness of the factory primer. Sometimes those '32-inch' doors are acutally 32 and 1/16 beacuse of the coating. If you're using a manual plane, keep a candle or some beeswax handy to rub on the sole of the tool. It makes the metal glide over the wood like butter, wich saves your shoulders since you've got four of these to knock out.

Don't forget to seal those raw edges after you're done shaving 'em down. If you're using cheap slabs and you leave the top or bottom bare, they'll soak up moisture and swell like crazy, expecially in a bathroom or laundry room. Just a quick hit of primer or paint keeps 'em from warping later. Also, if you're lazy like me, a belt sander with 60-grit paper's way faster than a hand plane for taking off an eighth, though it's way messier. Just do it outside so you don't coat your hallway in dust.

I'm totally new to this and honestly pretty nervous about ruining a brand new door. If I use a hand plane on the hinge side like you guys suggested, do I have to cut those little recessed pockets for the hinges again? I think they're called mortises? I've never used a chisel before and that sounds way harder than just shaving the edge. Also, is there a trick to knowing how much "solid" wood is acutally on the edge before I accidentally break through into the hollow middle part? I'd hate to see a gap there after all that work.