Door replacements - advice please

My interior doors are falling to bits and i like the look of the BnQ oak veneer doors which appear at least to be solid doors (are they?) i.e. not hollow.

I woould like to do a proper job when replacing them and replace the surrounds at the same time. BnQ do an edging to match the oak doors but it's £20 a strip and I would need 5 strips per door if I were doing the inside and outside surrounds - so that's an extra £100 per door not including other wood and the doors are only £50. And some-thing else I've just thought of the surround then wouldn't match the main wood for the frame..

Any ideas what to do since the doors have to be stained anyway could I get a suitable wood and stain it so the colors will match (some-how I'm doubting that would work unless I use oak and I can't see that being cheap...)

Also is there some-where better than BnQ to get doors from - i don't want to spend loads but a non-pine solid durable door is what i'm after (pine feels a bit flimsy and light-weight and a darker wood would probably be better)

I bought 8 of these oak veneered doors from B and Q, have fitted five so far. I didnt stain them though just used an interior varnish and they look great. Also bought a matching vertical glazed oak veneer door from Wickes and it matches the others exactly.

I replace all the architrave surrounds with simple bull nose from Wickes but stained them with a light oak stain. They don't exactly match but they do look pretty close.

Make sure you pilot hole the hinges though cause the door sides can easily split as I found out to my cost.

OK Thanks - I would have expected the doors to be solid... and not split... Maybe because it's hardwood?

So you're happy with them? And what is the bull nose stuff you used for the surround? Material - price?

men8ifr said:

OK Thanks - I would have expected the doors to be solid... and not split... Maybe because it's hardwood?

So you're happy with them? And what is the bull nose stuff you used for the surround? Material - price?

Click to expand...

basicly you have a core of complete crapy bits of pine several dozen bits glued together with a thin veneer of hardwood on the surface and edge strips a few mm thicker than the maximum you can remove

thats why they say words like" luxury oak finnish" or luxury russian dark oak effect finnish

the first means it uses real oak wood and or veneer in the finnish

the second means it can be made from anything but looks like dark oak

the word "solid wood " just means no unnesisery gaps but can be any wood or combination off any wood

Did you get the internal bit of the frame as well as the 'surround' bits that go on the wall (both sides) if you know what I mean - what did it cost you per door?

Big-all's description is about right. The inner "solid" bits are crappy chip and pine wood. You could only take a maximum of 5mm or so of the sides and 10-15mm of the top and bottom.

However if you take care with them when fitting the finish is pretty good. By the way sold wood will split if you screw near the edges without pilot holes. These doors are no different.

Bull nose is a curved finish strip of wood that goes around the facings of the walls 5mm above and to the side of the door. People refer to it as architrave too. You can get all sorts of profiles but bull nose is one of the cheaper. You can get this from any of the sheds or timber yards in various lengths, usually in pine which you can stain. £2 or £3ish per 2 metre strip.

The "internal bit of the frame" you refer to are probably the door liners or do you mean the thin strips stopping the door which are door stops. The liners can be stripped and sanded down, but the stops are cheap enough to replace with fresh - either paint or stain.

Remember you get what you pay for and at £50 these were good deals. Far better than the usual pine interior crap that you see.