Update Your Home with Budget-Friendly Interior Slab Doors

We’re Updating Our Home with New Slab Doors

We are doing a lot of home improvement projects around the house. The hallway is getting an overhaul. Do you remember that we are hacking the bedroom hallway from the HGTV Dream Home 2015?

The messiest part of the job for the hallway is done. We removed the wallpaper and scraped off cracked and peeling paint on the ceiling. For the hallway, we needed seven new interior doors. Prehung doors are pricey at $60 to $75.00 each and we don’t need new door frames so we thought of another solution. Instead, we bought new 6-panel slab doors by Mastercraft at Menards. Slab doors are just that, a slab with no doorknob, hinges or latch. The cost for each slab door depending on size was $35 to $45 each. Since we are updating seven doors, it was a no-brainer to buy new door slabs and do it ourselves.

New Slab Doors

Here is our first haul of new slab doors plus trim for around the doors we picked up a few months ago. Last weekend we bought the last door, trim, paint and other odds and ends. This is my dining room decor these days; doors, trim, ladders, tools, paint.

DOOR KNOBS: We paid $86.82 for the bedroom door knobs plus $14.99 for two closet door knobs. The thing about being under construction is that you will notice my nice white tablecloth has hardware upon it and not things that are pretty.

We removed the knobs, hinges and latches from all the old doors. Then one-by-one laid each old door on top of the new door slab to use as a template.

For the door knob we traced the circle openings on the new door.

X Marks the spot.

Follow the same idea marking and measuring for the new hinges and latch hole where the door bolt is.

The door slabs were just a tad too long. Marked it with a pencil and

scored the pencil line with a straight edge razor knife to help prevent splintering when cutting with the circular saw.

We covered the line and the door with masking tape before cutting as an added measure to prevent even more splintering. This is just our OCD extra step to make sure the cut turns out perfect.

Secured the door on all four corners with clamps to keep it from moving around while measuring, drilling and cutting.

Our homemade circular saw guide was made of spare pieces of wood we keep around for DIY projects. We used it to guide the saw to make nice, straight, clean cuts.

We cut about a 1/2 inch off the bottom of the door. If your door is too long, always cut off from the bottom of the door and never the top.

Tada, now it’s the perfect length.

HINGE CUT OUT AND IRWIN KIT

This is the Irwin Kit template for the lockset. After it is secured in place….

start chiseling

with a wood chisel to carve out the new hinge area.

There ya go. That’s all there is to it!Remember that circle we traced for the door knob above? The Irwin kit has a template to drill for the door knob (on the left) and latch hole (on the right).

It was pretty easy to drill the new door knob hole. Tim read that the correct way to do it is to drill one side and then turn it over and drill the other side. I do recommend drilling that way if the door is already hung. I just drilled straight through with no problem.

Drilling the lock set with the template made me nervous so I only did one and let Tim handle the rest.

Slab Doors Installation List

Tools needed:

Plus the Slab Doors and Door Knobs we purchased at Menards. I found a pine slab door you could order from Amazon and have delivered.

It took us about an hour top per door, from start to finish, with a little coffee break here and there in-between. So updating your home with new slab doors is not only a budget-friendly idea, it is also fairly easy.

We are very happy with the look of the new doors. Next on the to-do list is a trip to Lowe’s. They have the best white beadboard I have found for the bottom half of the walls and ceiling.

Here’s another look at the 2015 HGTV Dream Home hallway we are hacking to give you an idea of where we are going with our hallway.

On a personal note, this month we lost our long-time best buddy of 16 years, Simba. He had kidney failure and we miss him dearly. He set the tone for treat time for himself and our dog Anya. I have to make a conscious effort to give Anya treats now. Simba’s favorite place to be was the bathtub where his main goal was to manipulate you to turn on the water faucet so he could drink from the stream. His nickname was Simba-Do and Mister.