Building interior doors

[waffle]

Has anyone ever built their own interior doors? I'm in the process of redoing my master bedroom and need to replace the closet doors. The doors that were on there were these giant sliding mirror doors. I want to have two sets of French type hinged doors. The problem is that all standard door sizes I've found online are either too big or two small. That leaves me with ordering expensive custom doors or building my own.

I've never built anything like a door before, but have watched a few videos and it doesn't seem too hard. I'd appreciate any advice and insight anyone has to offer.

[music lover]

Why not buy doors slightly too big and trim them to size? Or change the size of the closet opening to fit the doors...adding or removing a couple studs and cutting drywall is easier and less expensive than building doors from scratch.

[prime95]

I'm in agreeance with music lover.  There are a couple of ways that you can get standard doors to fit.  A planar can help you with getting your doors down to size if it's less than a few inches that makes larger doors too big... or add some 2x4s (or other size depending on how much smaller you need to go ) to reframe the opening to fit smaller doors, drywall, spackel, paint and voila, you can then fit standard doors.

[waffle]

I considered doing some reframing to make them fit. The problem is that the opening is about 90" wide. Doors at home depot come in 24" or 18" wide. The 24" are just to wide even with a bit of trimming. I could make the 18" work, but then I have to frame off a foot and a half of the closet and make it hard to reach around for things (not a walk in closet). That certainly wouldn't be the end of the world but not ideal.

I'd also like to have a little bit of a premium feel to the room and those doors jump up in price a lot. I haven't done any detailed pricing on what it would cost to build my own yet, but it seems like I should be able to build 4 doors for less than $200 (the approximate cost of 4 18" doors)

[paddedhat]

You are not going to be happy with a pair of 45" French doors, even if you could make them, or spend a metric shit-ton of cash for custom ones. That is simply too big of a hinged door to perform well. Reframe the opening to reduce it to a reasonable size, a max. of 72" then look at your options. The other option would be to double up on traditional sliding door track, and fill the opening with three 32" sliding doors. This will take a bit of creativity when it comes to hardware, and installation, but it will be the easiest and least expensive option.

[waffle]

I don't want one set of French doors that are 45" wide each door. I want two sets of French doors around 21" wide for each door. 4 doors total

[bandito]

I like to reframe to standard size openings  for resale purposes.  If potential buyers can be turn off if they want  to change the doors and realizes that they can't use a standard size door.

[Spork]

I'm with the others: buy standard sizes.

Trimming down a door will be tricky.  You'll have to trim both sides -- or it will just look wrong-wrong-wrong.  I.e, if the glass of the French door isn't centered, you will hate it.

Consider shopping somewhere besides the big box stores.  There are often good used materials stores (Habitat for Humanity ReStore, for example).  Large cities are likely to have a used materials stores that specialize in just doors.

If you want new... look around for a door and millwork store.  They are likely to be better quality for a cheaper price.  I've bought 30 something new doors within the last 3 years.  I made an exception and bought one door from Home Depot custom order.  It was the lowest quality piece of junk I've ever seen (and cost a crapton).  We made Home Depot take it back... and I went back to the millwork shop and got one there.  Lesson learned.

[paddedhat]

I don't want one set of French doors that are 45" wide each door. I want two sets of French doors around 21" wide for each door. 4 doors total

Wait.......what?  Are you reframing the wall to create two door openings with a width of 42" ? OR are you trying to find two pairs of bi-fold doors to span the 90" opening, or??????  As a builder for the last three decades, it's not like I'm totally clueless here, it's just that either you math doesn't add up, or there is a bit of info. missing here.
how about another clue?

[laughing_paddler]

Not sure if this is something you're up for considering (let alone if it could even work in your space ), but I like the look of these wall mount doors or multi pass doors from Johnson hardware. I did a wall mount in my small bathroom and it was a really big space saver.

[url]http://www.johnsonhardware.com/mdindex.htm/[url]

[waffle]

I don't want one set of French doors that are 45" wide each door. I want two sets of French doors around 21" wide for each door. 4 doors total

Wait.......what?  Are you reframing the wall to create two door openings with a width of 42" ? OR are you trying to find two pairs of bi-fold doors to span the 90" opening, or??????  As a builder for the last three decades, it's not like I'm totally clueless here, it's just that either you math doesn't add up, or there is a bit of info. missing here.
how about another clue?

Sorry maybe I didn't explain it clearly enough. the rough opening was about 90". Since I am doing two sets of French doors (I don't want bi-folds) there needed to be the beam in the middle. That plus the jam brings it down so the finished opening is around 84"

I started a new thread about the bedroom in general but here is what I'm doing with the closet.