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$80 to $200 (door); $40 to $100 (lockset)
Difficulty: Challenging
Careful planning, patience and attention to detail are required when trimming door to size and cutting hinge mortises.
A door that's good for slamming has got to have some heft to it. Not a hollow-core, filled-with-cardboard, I-can-punch-my-hand-through-it kind of door. A real door, made of solid wood or MDF or at least a nice veneer with a core of thick wood pieces.
Unfortunately, the land is rife with hollow-core doors. The darling of the developer and the bane of the homeowner, these lightweight partitions don’t do much more than block light. Sound echoes off their tinny shells and seeps right through them.
Lucky for you, we have the fix. In a weekend, you can replace one of those impostors with a genuine door, the way This Old House technical editor Mark Powers shows here. Not only will it look better, but it’ll sound better, too, muffling all manner of intrusive noise. And, ah, the way it feels—heavy, sturdy, and ready to slam shut with a resounding thud.
