Thread: Hanging new interior doors - advice?

Hi,

I am about to start hanging some new internal doors I bought from bunnings and thought I should do some research first. They are the hollow core doors and I will need to shave some off the edges to make them fit.

Can you put the door handle and lock mechanism on either side of the door or is there some kind of mark showing where it needs to go?

What kind of thickness is the minimum I need to leave on the edges? I suspect I will need to remove more than is usual due to everything in our old house being non-standard (from memory, I need to remove 5mm from each side of the door, it might be more).

I have a brand new 650W ryobi electric planer, will this suffice for adjusting the door size? It can plane up to 1.5mm at a time, should I use a smaller size and do multiple passes, or doesnt it matter?

Will painting white gloss enamel with a sponge-brush be a good idea? I already have the paint and prefer enamel, so please dont recommend aqua-namel or anything like that. I just need a good way of applying the paint that wont leave marks. The doors have decorative panels, i.e. they are not flat.

Any other advice would also be appreciated.

Should be a sticker on the edge indicating which side to hang or place the door knob.
Unless it is a reversible one so either side is fine.

I just never get the finish I want with planners and the last few I have used a belt sander
but this was for only a few mm.

Since you have decorative inserts you may still get away with just planning one edge,
I would be using the planned edge to hang so its not so obvious if you cause any damage.

Just not a fan of enamel or high gloss , I roll all my doors then tip with brush, using just a roller
will leave a roller look and I think cheapens the look, your still going to get marks from a paint
brush but looks better to me..

I just did all 13 of mine, took off the old door and used as a kind of "template" to mark hinge positions and size.
Trim with circular saw, fine blade, and straight edge to close to finished size, allowing some for planing, then hung and tweaked with smoothing plane.
I, as a handyman, don't get to use the electric plane too often and its EASY to get carried away with the softwood they're made of. Witness, 1 door in shed!
Worth the money to buy a router jig to do hinge let-ins, fast and accurate. I started with chisel, got lent a jig, rest flew by...
Just need to make sure that the jig is the same size as your existing hinges, may need to purchase an adjustable one.
Important to very finely arris the edges buy hand with the plane set very fine. the masonite sorta stuff they're faced with chips like a bugger, and can ruin the whole thing.
One problem I faced was that I could not buy doors even close to the right height, so had to buy them some 50-60mm taller, then when I trimmed took off all the base board timber in the door. Then I had to clean that up, re-glue into door cavity, wait to dry and carry on!

painting...I bought some aquanamel from a friend, and thinned first coat with little water as advised. This allows the paint to flow without drying off too fast. Second coat
un-thinned, great finish. Same rule apparently applies to enamel, thin first coat with a bit of turps or thinners. THE KEY is a GREAT quality brush, for this job you cannot really spend too much on a good brush, within reason. Just got almost a mirror finish on my front door with enamel and this process and wet sanding between coats.

david

If you do use a planer just remember to put a decent chamfer on the ends otherwise you will end up tearing out big chunks of timber

Just use a sanding block to get the arris on the door edge, after planing.
Dont forget the undercoat on the enamel.

cheers