This is a tricky subject. With the exception of exterior doors, adding new doors to your home usually won’t make your house any more energy efficient. Indeed, adding new interior doors usually won’t make any difference, except for appearance. And there, they can make all the difference in the world.
Many older tract homes come with flat veneer interior doors. The veneer might be painted a color to match the walls, or it might be kept as a natural wood that’s been stained. Almost always they are hollow core, which means that interior of the door is empty, it has a frame and veneer on both sides with a few pieces of cardboard in between for support. It’s a hollow door. The molding around the door is also frequently only about an inch wide and is flat in appearance.
The problem with these interior doors, whether in wood or painted, is that they identify the house as tract-built and old-fashioned. Although there is nothing basically wrong with these doors, they are often too simple to allow your home to have an elegant air.
Exterior doors, particularly on the front, are more important, as they set the tone for the quality of the home. In many older homes, the front doors are simply a variety of the same door that was used inside, except that for security and fire safety, it’s almost always solid core, filled with wood or sometimes a cementlike material.
The front doors are portals to your home. If the portals have a rich look, then most visitors’ first impressions are that your home is richly outfitted. If they are plain looking, well, you can guess what the impression is going to be. It’s for this reason that many homeowner’s first upgrade in a home is to install new front doors.
Sliders are doors that typically lead to patios or garden areas to the side or rear of the home. The problem with these is that over the years, if they are wood, they might have rotted out due to regular exposure to moisture. If they are metal, they might bind and become difficult to move. Additionally, metal sliders often look old and tired.
What Are Your Options?
Most newer homes come with paneled doors that, though still composed of veneers and hollow cores, strike us a having a kind of classic beauty and modernity. These newer doors have a variety of panels extruded from the surface on both sides. They typically come in two-, four-, and six-panel varieties. And the surface can either be flat or simulated wood-grain. These doors are usually made of fiberglass.
When it comes to front doors, there’s almost no limit to the varieties available. You can, of course, use a door similar to those described for the inside, upraised panels with or without wood grain. Other varieties (all solid core) include:
Further, there are all sorts of hardware available for front doors. You can choose from the simplest to the most ornate.
Sliders are commonly made of vinyl frames. Be sure they use safety glass. The same conditions apply to them as to the new vinyl windows noted above.
Be aware, however, that vinyl sliders more than 6 feet wide can be very difficult to open and close.
Of course, you could opt for a variety of paneled sliders, which either are authentic (true panels of glass) or have a panel weave inserted between two panes of double-pane glass to give illusion of panels.
What Are the Typical Costs?
New interior doors are amazingly inexpensive. At building supply stores you can commonly find them as prehung (they’re set in their frame) for as little as $30 to $50 apiece. This includes a variety of paneled and wood grain doors. Ordered individually from custom manufacturers they run about twice that in price.
Of course, keep in mind that when installing new interior doors, you’ll have to remove the existing molding and replace it with new decorative molding. This can get expensive, but it will usually yield you a much finer looking doorway.
Replacing all the interior doors within a house, including putting on new molding and having it professionally done will typically cost between $1500 and $2000 for a standard 2000-square-foot house. Of course, the price can zoom up if you select expensive molding and fancier doors.
New front doors, although they also come prehung, must usually be professionally installed. The reason is that they must fit right within the frame to be weathertight, and they must be adequately attached to provide security for the home.
Often owners will opt for oak or another wood finish, many times with ornate glass embellishment. Complete the package with a polished gold, silver, or the new platinum look in hardware, and the entrance to your home can look truly elegant.
The doors themselves can cost anywhere from a minimal door of around $300, to a solid hardwood door costing $3000 to a more ornate set of double doors costing $6000 and up. Hardware for the door is typically an additional $100 or so, and expect to pay several hundred dollars to have a professional hang it.
Putting in new sliders depends on whether you use replacements or retrofits. Replacements run about $250 to $500 for a 6-foot or 8-foot door. Retrofits are roughly twice that price. Note that many professionals refuse to retrofit sliders, arguing that the retrofit process does not allow them to be sufficiently well attached.
What Are You Likely to Recoup?
While it’s hard to say, my own feeling is that if by adding new doors you change the feel of the home from one of an inexpensive tract house to that of a custom home, it can add thousands of dollars to the price, sometimes as much as the cost of all the doors.
Replacing all of your home’s doors, exterior and interior, can literally revolutionize your property’s appearance. Suddenly buyers can see value where they couldn’t see it before.
If you’re thinking of selling in the future and your home has old-fashioned doors, seriously consider upgrading them. It could make a big difference to buyers. (Of course, it could also make an enormous difference to your enjoyment of the home while you live there.)
Much thanks goes to frankhg for the awesome door photo.
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