Doors, Locks & Carpentry in Garner, NC

Why an old door is not a simple swap

Garner has a large stock of 1960s to 1980s ranches and split-levels, and their interior doors are usually original. That means they have been opened and closed a few hundred thousand times, and it shows.

The instinct is to buy a new door. In a house of this age that is worth thinking about first, because two things are frequently not what people assume.

The opening may not be a standard size

Interior door sizes have converged over the decades, and a house from 1968 does not necessarily follow current conventions. Openings an inch or two off modern stock widths are common, and some houses of this era have noticeably shorter doors than what is sold now.

A solid door can be trimmed. Within reason — the stiles and rails have material in them.

A hollow-core door cannot, much. Inside the edge of a hollow door there is a narrow timber stile, perhaps an inch wide, and cardboard honeycomb behind it. Take more than that off and you are into the void, and the door has no edge to fix a hinge or a latch to. It can be rebuilt by gluing a new timber strip into the opened edge, and that is real work rather than a trim.

So the measuring happens before anything is bought, not after.

The jamb may be the actual problem

This is the one that catches people out.

If a door has dropped repeatedly, the hinge has been pulling out of something. Frequently that something is the jamb, which after fifty years and several attempts at refixing is chewed — enlarged screw holes, split timber, sometimes filler where somebody tried to make it hold.

Fit a brand new door into that jamb and within a year you have a new door doing exactly what the old one did.

The jamb gets assessed and repaired first: plugging and redrilling the hinge positions, or moving to longer screws that pass through the damaged area into the framing behind, or replacing the damaged section.

What is actually failing on the door

Before condemning it, three checks:

The hinge side of the door edge. In a hollow-core door the screws bite into a narrow internal stile. Decades of use split it, the screws start turning freely, and the door drops. That can often be repaired — plugged, redrilled, or fixed with longer screws that reach past the damage.

The lock block. A block of solid timber inside the door where the handle goes. If a handle has been forced or the door has been slammed against a stop, that block can break loose from the skins. A hollow door with a failed lock block is generally not worth rebuilding, and that is the point at which we would say replace.

The skins. Dents, punctures and delamination at the bottom edge from being dragged over carpet. Cosmetic damage is filler and paint; a delaminated skin is not.

Doing them all at once

Worth mentioning because it is frequently the better value.

The cost of hanging a door is mostly setup and trim work rather than the door itself. Doing six in one visit costs considerably less per door than doing one, because the tools are set up once, the jambs get assessed consistently, and the trim work happens as one operation.

If half the doors in the house are on their way, doing them together is usually the sensible call.

Exterior doors

Seasonal binding. Doors swell in summer humidity and shrink in winter. A door that sticks in August and is fine at Christmas should not be planed — remove material now and you have a permanent gap and a draught in four months.

Thresholds. Most exterior sills have an adjustable insert with screws along it. Raising it lifts the seal back into contact with the bottom of the door, and in a house of this age nobody has ever touched it. It is the first thing to check on a draughty entrance.

Weatherstripping. A consumable with a service life. After twenty years it has taken a permanent set and only seals where the door presses hardest. Close the door on a sheet of paper and pull — where it slides out freely, there is no seal there.

Deadbolt strikes. Fixed with short screws that stop in the jamb rather than reaching the framing. Longer screws are a ten-minute change and the most useful security upgrade on a house.

Trim and baseboards

Older Garner houses frequently have profiles that are no longer stocked, and a modern stock profile beside an original one is visible from across the room. A damaged section gets built up from available parts to match, or milled where it is genuinely a one-off.

Where a room has had 1970s sheet panelling removed, the trim around it usually needs attention too — panelling was often fitted with its own edge trims and cap moulding that leave the casing and skirting looking odd once it has gone.

Small carpentry

To be concrete about what that covers: alcove and closet shelving, boxing in a pipe run, a window seat or mudroom bench, replacing a damaged stair spindle or handrail bracket, a small access hatch, trim around a new opening.

Not: structural framing, anything requiring a permit, or cabinetry that wants a joiner. Send a photo if you are unsure and we will tell you honestly.

Getting a price

Photograph the door closed with a close-up of the gap along the top and down the latch side, and a photo of the hinge where it meets the jamb. Measure the opening — width and height — and send those numbers. In a house of this age those two measurements decide most of the answer.

Garner is about half an hour from us, in the same bracket as most of our list.