Looking for some advice re internal doors.
I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will paint white.
I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.
Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?TIA,
KJR
I'd be at homebase buying theirs, assuming you can fit yourself. My maths would say, that by the time the homebase one is worn out, SHMBO will have decided she don't like it anyways, and being stuck with the oak one for 3 times longer, would be amajor issue to my ears listening to SHMBO.
If fitting is expensive (say 200 quid plus), and you are really sure you will still love the door in 20-50 years time, the oak is the best bet.
Rick
There's no guarantee that any wooden door won't shrink, hardwood or softwood. As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them supplied and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who does nothing but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or, for that matter, a chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.
I can't see any point in using hardwood *internal* doors - especially as you're going to paint them. External doors are a different kettle of fish - hardwood being stronger and more weather resistant - but a waste of money indoors unless you want a natural wood finish.
Why not get a "chippy who hangs the *occasional* door"? This is a bread and butter job (even for a poorly trained carpenter) and should cause no problems at all - especially a 'pine' internal door - and a painted one at that! They are even relatively easy for a competent DIY'er with a decent tool kit!
I had one of the last, true, five year apprenticeships back in the mid to late sixties, haven't touched the tools in anger for over twenty years, but can still hang a door with 'penny' joints, slightly bevel the leading edges for a 'sweet fit', know how to resolve problems with twisted and out of true frames etc - and can probably hang a hardwood door better than many of those 'door shop' fitters - I've seen some of their work over the years!
With regards to any 'internal' door - softwood or hardwood and even flush ones - buy the best that you can afford. Go for ones with through mortice and tenon joints (not dowelled) and leave them in the area where they are to be fitted for a couple of weeks to get acclimatised to reduce shrinkage and twisting after fitting.
With flush doors, ensure that you buy 'em with a generous 'lock block' on both sides and with a good quality plywood face rather than hardboard. If you are doing a D-I-Y fit as an amateur, check for any bevelled leading edges already on the door before starting AND take your time fitting them.
Brian G
Fitting a new door shouldn't be beyond the competency of anyone used to working with wood.
Hardwood doors are the ones to go for if you want a varnished finish. However, at that price, they should also be a lot better made than any you can buy from a shed. Shed bought doors will probably have dowel joints. A well-made door, whether softwood or hardwood, will have mortise and tenon joints and a really well-made one will have wedged mortise and tenon joints.
Colin Bignell
Hanging an internal door is a piece of piss for a moderately competent=20 DIYer.
With knotty pine there is always some risk of warping. Clear pine glazed is much more stable, that's porbably what I'd go for. Will be more then =A345 but much less than =A3200.
Go for hardwood if you want hardwood... otherwise for internal doors theres not a lot of point.
Finally you dont need a nice toolkit to hang them. 2 Chisels, lump to wack em with, 90 degree edge thing (even paper at a pinch), holesaw and plane are the essentials, and yuo can get that lot for a tenner if you have to. Better is nicer of course, but not actually necessary.
NT
The amount of knots has no bearing on the stability. In fact I think the marketing term originally referred to Lodgepole Pine, popular in the
70s, that had hundreds of small knots but was remarkably stable.
Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.
So how do you rank "average", when compared with "moderately competent"?
I would have thought that moderately competent was somewhat better than average.
it has everything to do with it.
it would be if the knots are very small.
honestly
I haven't sharpened a chisel in years. Electric plane, router and homemade jig for the hinge rebates do it for me. As the man said, piece of piss if you think it through and take your time.
MBQ
Grain. Knots. Relative quality of timber. There're lots of cheap doors about made from low quality timber, but careful selection of your door from a rack of polythene covered ones can lead to some good cheap doors being found.
Careful selection is certainly the key when selecting cheap doors.
I recently replaced all of our old internals with the 4 panel, knotty pine model from B&Q - =A315 each!
It took two trips to select the 6 unwarped/undamaged doors I ended up with out of a total of around 30-40.
The essential thing with knotty pine is to seal the knots. I painted one of my doors earlier this year havign forgotten to use bloody knotting and it's coming through already. All the otehrs are fine.
I even sawed two in half down the long axis and made matching bi-folds. I needed a few nails to strengthen the cut edge, but they didn't disintegrate in a pile of pieces as I had anticipated they might.
Personally I found hanging them a piece of piss. The longest job was painting. There's a lot of sruface area on 6 doors. Stunk the house out for days.
Of course I've now got all the old original, dipped doors in the garage that I don't know what to do with. The ruthless part of me says chuck them in the wood skip at the dump, but another part of me thinks that someone with an old house and more patience may want to restores them lovingly.
--=20 Steve F
I have similar experience of this - don't, OP, be afraid to: get a door off the shelf. If it's obviously useless (50%), replace it at one end. Get more doors off, lean them up on the opposite side of the aisle. Replace the ones that you suddenly don't like, having seen them better (25%). Get the ones that are left, and carefully lie them down on the floor (make sure the floor is free of debris), and remove other twisted ones (15%). Pick the best of what's left. If there aren't enough, don't compromise - you may have to go to another branch, or wait a few weeks for stock to turn over.
*Forgot*?!!! N.B. if you paint a varnished door, you still need to apply knotting first!
Sorry, forgot this bit - if you don't want them, and can't sell them, advertise them as "free" - then you'll do someone a favour, and don't even need to go to the tip!
Canadian Yellow Pine is well known for its stability but has enormous knots. And don't give me the "honestly" bit. I used to make pine frames for a living so I have good experience of selecting straight sections from long lengths.
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