We are remodeling an old house we own and want to replace the cheap looking (and largely damaged) doors with some 6 panel doors from Home Depot. One d oor is 25 5/8 wide and Home Depot doesn't stock a 26" door that could be tr immed to fit this one silly opening. If I special order one, it will take w eeks and be super expensive. But it is pretty clear that there isn't enough "meat" on either side of a standard 28" door to trim it down to our size. What's my best bet here?
Well, if you special order one and then start working overtime you should have enough saved to cover the added cost. Another option would be to have your wife get a job, or if she already has one, have her start working overtime too.
Did you get an actual quote on the special order doors?
I had to special order some doors for our house (from Lowes). The price difference was minimal and ours were ready to pick up in a couple weeks.
Most retail doors are modular anyway and can be customized quickly to any size you need. The stores stock the most popular sizes, but other sizes are generally in the same price range.
I think you have several possible options, but none are perfect given what you described so far. But, you did say that it is only one door, so that's a plus. If you had to figure out a solution for replacing many odd size doors at once, it would be a lot more complicated and expensive.
You didn't mention the height of the door opening, but typical door interior heights these days are 80 inches. And, more recently, 78 inches was a standard height and 78 inch high doors are still available.
1) One option is to buy a hollow core door that is 28 inches wide and trim both sides to fit the opening. That's a little tricky with hollow core doors, but these two videos give an idea of how that can be done:
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2) Another option is to buy an all solid wood interior 6 panel door and trim it to size. That avoids the hollow core issues.
3) Maybe a third option is to buy a solid core 6 panel door, and trim that to size. I am not sure what is inside a solid core 6 panel door, so I don't know what you would end up with for an edge if you cut more than a inch off of each side of the solid core. Maybe others here would know, or maybe you can Google search and try to find that information.
4) The last option is to change the entire opening size of the existing door. In other words, remove the existing door frame, change it to a larger common size, and the replace the old frame and trim with new frame and trim. That's a big job and not easy. And, matching the old frame style that probably exists on all of the other doors nearby may be difficult -- depending on what is there now.
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