Our new (to us) house has hollow core wood doors that are dated, and I found a door store that sells nothing but nice seconds with very minor blemishes… And I managed to pick up 7 (yes, seven!) doors of the right dimension to replace all the old doors in the house. The new ones are pre-hung so…
I recently replaced two other doors from the same store, they were also pre-hung, but because those doors are in tight hallways I elected to just replace the doors and throw away the trim work and surround. That required some minor adjustment of the hinge spaces and the latch hole because - why the #$&(& isn’t that placement standardized? .l But I digress.
So what would be easier? Replacing the 7 doors and resetting hinges/latches, or taking out the original trim and surrounds and replacing everything with the pre-hung component that the doors come with? I hate that resetting the hinges leaves hinge/latch chip-out in the surround, but once stained it’s not too painful.
(These doors are solid wood with routed pattern designs, very nice, but also need to be finished, which I am in the process of starting.)
Goofy I vote for replacing the doors – the hardest part is cutting and installing the trim. But my guess is you can do that. Another advantage is unless you are a really luck person, your existing doors are not perfectly installed – like plumb so they stay where you leave them partially open and all the gaps around the door are equal.
When I retired 10 years ago, one of my early projects was replacing all the doors here which were the cheap luan hollow core… I used a Porter Cable hinge router jig to match existing hinges. Mist were formed doors, not solid, but some odd ones had to be solid… Lefts, rights, also replaced all the hinges, latches with Schlage… Fun!
Are you switching to solid core?
Either way, I’d buy a few packs of shims and go with the pre-hungs every time.
8 in. Wood Shims (12-Piece per Bundle)
You can’t count on any of the old doors/frames to be square. Spend too much time trying to make stuff fit.
So what would be easier? Replacing the 7 doors and resetting hinges/latches, or taking out the original trim and surrounds and replacing everything with the pre-hung component that the doors come with?
I think it’ll be easier to pull off the trim and install it as a pre-hung.
I’ll second the idea of a nail gun if you don’t have one - 18 gauge finish nail gun works great on putting trim back up.
I think if you take time to use a razorblade all the way around the trim, you’re likely to be able to reuse the trim on most of the doors. At least I am assuming that your trim has paint that’s going to be helping adhere it to the wall and the current jambs.