How to buy doors that don't suck... (info-dense episode)

foreign [Music] oh hey guys how's it going just checking out some exterior doors here at the Builders first or showroom you know when you go door shopping there's a lot of options it could be overwhelming to see a showroom like this so in the build show today I'm going to break it down for you what are these doors made of what do they cost we're going to talk about both interior and exterior doors plus all the accessories today's build show is sponsored by Endura let's get going [Music] okay so we're actually going to start with interior doors we'll come back to exterior doors in a minute but when you go to the showroom you're going to notice a bunch of different options on interior doors and frankly a lot of different costs your least cost interior door is something like this this is a hollow core door and to be honest this video was a little bit inspired by my buddy Brent Hull who recently cut one of these open to see what was inside I think Brent actually sums it best let's cut to that video real quick I guess I've been disenchanted over the last I don't know 20 30 years at doors and I remember my father-in-law was building a house when we first got married I just finished North Bennett Street and I remember the doors were so flimsy and cheap and I was just kind of disgusted by it especially coming from my background and everything else so I want to just kind of highlight what's happened to doors and and hopefully steer you away from buying the cheapest thing out there because it's it's a picture of a door right it's not even a door it's it's it's it's a picture of one it's kind of a door but anyway so 1900s my building 1921 this is a styling rail door right so we've got Styles we've got rails got raised panels This is a very simple raised panel that was very popular in the 20s this is is a real door if you look from the top you can see see The Styling rail profile so the style has what's called a sticking right and then there's a cope on the rails is they cope into there and there's joinery in here there's uh dowels or there's a mortise and Tenon joint and so you know after 1900 you get away from the through mortise and tenons and the the wedged mortise and tenons and the things that were popular pre-1900 so I'm gonna do the same thing on the other side and I'll just knock this thing out of here foreign [Music] no joinery is just glued together so there's our cope they've just glued this together there's no dowels there's nothing inside here there's no joinery they just have glued it together they also the sticking is is actually milled into this so we're talking about was wood right and so you can see how the bottom flares out that's because water got in here and obviously this would have to be cut off we were going to try to use it for a client everything is MDF in here and it's a very heavy door right but it's not necessarily well made now the last piece you want to look at is the door I went to The Big Box store yesterday and bought and they range in price from about seventy dollars or sixty dollars down to fifty dollars and this I hate because it's kind of a a picture of a door that's where I may start ranting right there's no wood in America that we made doors out of that has this kind of grain texture I mean we would have to sand blast the door in order to get grain texture like this just so we're clear so it doesn't exist right it's a fabrication it's a it's a falsity that that you would have this door it's a six panel door panels being the word here because what you have here is you have a skin dropped onto a hollow core so this door probably weighs 15 pounds it's a it's a two foot door I think it was sixty dollars and so we're gonna jump into this one and I know there's no joinery I think it was glued together but we're gonna kind of dig into it and figure it out wow okay that didn't take long basically what we've got here is a cardboard okay so we got cardboard I mean if you want to be making you know building doors a cardboard I suppose you can I don't recommend it as far as longevity all right so now I was able to pry it up and we'll get in here and just kind of lift this skin off here right so you can see that's kind of just peeling up this this really is frustrating all right so there's your door people there's what sixty dollars buys you all right it buys you styrofoam inside an exterior core this is what today is considered Builder grade and I'm proud of being a builder and the thought that this is our grade of doing work means that all we care about as Builders is building as cheap and fast as possible this is a shame this is a sham and so it drives me crazy okay so I know a lot of you have this in your house I built a lot of houses when I was in my production Builder days with these it still works it's still a door this is definitely your least cost option around 100 bucks I wouldn't recommend it though now another least cost option that's also Holland core is down here this is a luon face Hollow Corridor as well very very lightweight a lot of more modern houses and production builders that are going modern are doing this and if you knock on this door it feels pretty lightweight now on the other hand this other door which looks exactly the same I can't lift it to show you the weight but it's probably uh gosh this door's probably close to 80 pounds something like this this door's probably 15. you hear that difference that's a solid core and that's really where I'm going to start as my least cost good door solid core doors now these can range in cost quite a bit but even less expensive than this one they don't have it on display is a hardboard solid core door I would not recommend those and I wouldn't recommend the other Hollow core doors but this would be my starting point of least cost good you're talking about for a luon face or a birch face with a solid core this door is probably somewhere in the 150 to 200 range maybe slightly more so that would be my first kind of least cost good door now when it comes to solid doors you've got a lot of other options but let's start here this is a true Pine door and a bunch of different manufacturers make these as what I would consider commodity doors which means as long as you get their stock sizes this is a true wood door and you can find these sometimes for a pretty good price like somewhere in the 300 range for a solid wood door now you're not going to have a lot of options and I I suspect it's not going to have As Nice of moldings as what you're seeing here but that's also a good option now when it comes to solid core though most of the time these days this is what a lot of Builders are kind of considering as their bottom threshold this is a true MDF solid Corridor and I've had this both in my previous house and my current house and I'll be honest uh I don't like MDF generally for inside of houses because it can have some swelling issues for instance look at this bottom of the door here that MDF goes all the way to the bottom if I were to sit if I were to sit this in some water it wouldn't take very long for this to puff up so if you're getting an MDF solid Corridor you really want to make sure that you're nice and painted at the bottom so that especially in bathroom areas where you might have some moisture it's not going to soak up but to be honest for the price point you can get a really nice door and because it's MDF these panels are not going to move on your especially for a painted door so like that Pine door we talked about a minute ago that door is going to move those panels are going to move so if you're staining it you're good to go you won't notice that but if you're painting it you're going to see cracks and changes swelling as the temperature or really humidity changes in the house over the years but the other thing that you're going to notice on these style doors is they do have a solid wood insert on both sides so this is the hinge side and the strike side is also going to have a solid wood insert these could be as little as 300 they can also go up hugely from there I mean you can see MDF router carved doors that could be easily a thousand dollars and I suspect some of these models that are a little more complicated especially from True style which is a great brand this door is certainly above 500 and could be as much as a thousand dollars per door so those are not inexpensive doors now there's an interesting middle ground on doors like this is actually a hardboard door I I've used these before I don't like them because that hardboard face damages pretty easily whereas that Luan face it's a lot more solid I'd prefer the luon face you're going to spend a couple you know at least 30 to 50 dollars more for that luon face compared to the hardboard door but I think it's better now if you're getting nicer doors let's say you're doing a slab oak or something like that this door is going to have an even nicer core and you're going to see a bunch of different styles from this one that kind of looks like OSB to LSL style typically the most costly door is going to be this which is a Stave Corridor which is actually solid wood so this luon face this is a probably a mahogany style Luan with a Stave core this could easily be three four hundred dollars per door but if you're doing hidden doors like you've seen me do in a lot of my videos we're actually cladding something you're going to glue and maybe nail into this you want that stay of course so if you're gonna buy some sugatsuni hinges and have a carpenter do a hidden door ask for Stave core that's absolutely worth the money and they can custom size these for you in all kinds of different sizes so at my house I've got a a couple of Uh custom sized like nine foot by three foot six wide all kinds of weird sizes especially if you're doing a hidden a couple of the doors that I hadn't mentioned though that are worth considering you can get MDF doors that are straight off the shelf and these are a good option as well I like the inch and three quarter doors that's what I used at my house the inch and three quarter or pardon me the inch and three eighths that's a little more standard you're going to see that a little more often the inch and three quarter it's heavier it's a little tougher to install but it's just that much more weight uh that much better noise resistance between those rooms speaking of weight by the way at my house I use the new tool that I hadn't seen before that I got to introduced to about a year ago called the door stud and in this clip Patrick one of my finished Carpenters was using that to install some double doors and I got to tell you it was a total Game Changer so I'll put a link in the description to that door set if you're doing heavier doors do your finished Carpenter a favor and get them a pair of those door studs now talk to me about the install on the set on this Gilbert usually on a install like this it's kind of hard for one person to do it but now with these guys right here down here man you can move this this door you walk it in you get it close enough and you just slide it right into place okay two final thoughts on interior doors if you're building a custom home and you've got the budget boy they make some really nice doors out there true style Simpson there's a couple other manufacturers they're making this style door which has a really thick veneer of let's say riffs on White Oak here and you're gonna notice this has an LSL core so that's going to be a really nice door very solid and it's not going to move on you plus when they put their uh Style on the end here you can see that's also a white oak style so it's going to match the door these are pricey these uh I think you're gonna have a hard time finding any of these doors that are going to have this really beautiful face for much under a thousand dollars per door and I would tell you over the years for the most part most of my houses get doors that are in the 250 to say 350 range per door but you do a really cool custom home it's not unusual to see two three even five thousand dollars or more for some of those interior doors so there's obviously a huge range the last thing I want to mention though is don't forget about your hinges there's kind of three manufacturers that I've used the most over the years pen rod is usually the lowest cost uh product out there but you want to specify ball bearing hinges for your interior doors if you don't that metal on metal rubbing of the hinges is going to result in this black mark on your jam and if you've got painted jams like I've had in my houses for years almost always do I have this black streak that I'm cleaning every six months or a year get the ball bearings absolutely worth it up from Penrod is m-tech and that's actually what I used at my house oh by the way we'll end the video at my house I'll show you a couple of the products that I used I like mtech it's a nice middle of the road a lot of nice options I did ball bearing and then kind of the top of the line if you have the money and you have the budget for it Baldwin it makes some amazing products but spend a little extra on the ball bearing hinges hard to know exactly but I suspect uh ball bearing hinges are going to add somewhere between uh maybe as little as sixty dollars for a pre-hung door all the way up to 100 or more but like I said totally worth it because you're not going to have that smudging on your paint over the years that being said let's switch gears and talk exterior doors okay exterior doors let's start with the least cost that's going to be a steel door this is actually not steel this is fiberglass but typically when you think of a steel door you're thinking about that fire door that typically needs to be a 20 minute rated door between your house and your garage I use steel for a long long time in my production Builder days that door these days is probably in the 400-ish dollar range but I really like fiberglass since the pandemic and the supply chain issues the difference between the two frankly is not much maybe 50 75 bucks so for a flush fiberglass insulated door between your house and your garage that's a great door the other nice thing about this style of door is you've got good insulation in between and that fiberglass is a really durable face now you can also get much more much much more expensive fiberglass doors for instance I was on the jeld-win catalog the other day and they have kind of a good better best of fiberglass where you can get a commodity fiberglass you know something like this five six hundred bucks or you can go all the way up to custom fiberglass I'm going to show you that later in the video at my house but fiberglass could be stained on the outside could be painted on the outside it's a really nice impervious door and if you have really minimal overhangs this is kind of what you want I think for next to your door is that fiberglass because you're not going to have any issues with moisture with wood having refinishing issues and you're going to have a really nicely insulated door but believe it or not you can still get some molded type panels with fiberglass and then of course you can add lights to it as well so this is going to be your maybe your next step up you've got a door out of your laundry room or maybe you're on a budget this is your exterior door to your back deck that's a really nice door this is Therma true now Simpson and jeldwin also make a similar door out of fiberglass and you can also check their u-value ratings on the website which is pretty cool but a door like this is going to have pretty similar values to a window something around a u-factor of anywhere from 0.15 to maybe 0.30 and this door I suspect is somewhere in the thousand dollar range now I really like the flush glazing that a lot of Manufacturers have gone to these days where you don't have a bunch of ogs you've got a much more uh kind of square sticking on these doors and I think for that thousand to fifteen hundred dollar range this is a really nice store I would totally do this this is a great budget item now before we talk about exterior doors I want to do a quick plug for Endora because no matter which exterior door you order you want to get Endura parts for it now they sponsored today's video but I'll tell you I've personally been using their products in all my houses that I built for the last 20 years so these are products that are tested on my houses and I really really like for instance compared to a pine Jam which is what is standard in a lot of door Mill shops this is their frame saver Jam they've they've put a composite wood in the bottom couple inches of the frame so that water that sits here on an exterior door is not going to rot this you're also going to notice on the bottom of the sill the bottom part of the sill that's solid also a composite material it's not going to Rod it's not going to have problems and then when it comes to the door bottom and the sill itself I really like this Z series articulating sill check this out this seal is actually actually when the door shuts going to articulate and really close the door tightly and then I've got another Jam option or I should say another door option that I'm going to show you at my house in a minute but let's go back to wood doors I put a lot of wood doors on over the years they're beautiful they're also gonna you're gonna spend some bucks on a wood door but the the options are really Limitless here's a Simpson door that's a true wood door Brent would be happy about this one kind of fun that they're able to do two different woods so the inside of your house you could have this which looks like a vertical crane dug fur and then the outside is mahogany mahogany is a great exterior wood remember though you do want some overhangs you want at least a three or a five foot overhang on that front door to make sure that it's not going to get wet and then also some other manufacturers have gotten really smart about that wood and switching from solid wood to a wood that's not going to move so for instance check this out on this true style door you actually have an LV El core who I really like that that reminds me of the E-Series Windows by Anderson which are LVL so on the outside of the door you have no idea this is not a uh is this Alder maybe looking door oh pardon me mahogany but the interior they're being smart about the wood it's probably saving a little bit on cost but really they're doing it to make sure that door is not moving on you the downside of wood door is in my mind though is that these are going to be the least efficient out there because you've got solid wood on there and even at an inch and three quarters thick you're really talking about an R2 door maybe something like that so you might consider going at least inch and three quarter or maybe even thicker if you're doing a solid wood door on the outside now you can get those done through Builders First Source and they'll buy a door from one of these manufacturers or BFS has a custom Mill shop where you can get all kinds of things on really anything that your designer or architect might come up with the other thing I've done over the years has had my finished Carpenters make a door I made a beautiful white oak door to kind of match the white oak on a house recently and then a couple years ago we made a Spanish Cedar painted front door with some crazy details and that's the kind of fun stuff that I love on exterior doors but you can still use those Endura Parts like we talked about now when we go back to the door showroom you're going to see that there's a bunch of different options in that showroom and some of those are painted some are stained but it really boils down to wood doors fiberglass doors or steel doors and as I mentioned fiberglass I really really like for an exterior door I think it's a great option but you can spend some bucks and I'm going to show you that in a minute the other great option is of course wood and this is really especially if it's your front door this is where you should spend the money and get that really beautiful entryway with that being said guys let's go to my house and I'm going to show you three different door styles I use at my house I'll meet you there hey guys welcome to my house let's talk exterior doors here but of course you gotta mention that my plastic Jesus from the 70s absolutely my wife loves decorating for Christmas so this entryway this is a fiberglass entryway I was looking for black so this is painted you can see we beat it up in a couple places where I've got four kids coming through but this is a very very efficient door that I had custom built through geld one this is their uh kind of best line when it comes to fiberglass customized on size uh this is a specialty height I want to say I've got a 7 6 front door here because that's all I could do in terms of height but also getting my header in there custom width to my hallway not an inexpensive door this entryway is going to run you probably 10K or maybe slightly more but it was exactly how I wanted it I also got triple glazed glass in here and then of course because this fiberglass this is filled with uh with insulation and I was even able to customize these details like this Hardware cut out the glass size everything I needed it's a really nice door on interior doors I use router carved and again I customized these as well so this is going to be an upper end full MDF door these are probably somewhere in the 750 maybe 850 range for a router carved MDF door they're real heavy inch and three quarter thick I've got this nice mtech hardware and this is the door that you maybe saw that b-roll of Patrick installing heavy double doors but man they work great and I've got mtech ball bearing hinges everywhere so you're not seeing any of those black lines but the door I really wanted to show you is probably the least cost a door or maybe item in my whole house and that's right over here follow oh actually before we go there one other thing I wanted to show you sorry for the uh my wife hopefully won't watch this video and realize I didn't clean up this door on the exterior of my house was a custom door made by Fenster this is an all wood door you can see we clear finished it fenced her build it for my custom size but because of this awning that I've got here this is almost a five foot overhang I've got no splashback a year later this door is looking really good so you can get away with a true wood door unclad even just like my unclad windows over here but you need really good overhangs you don't want to have these in a spot where they're getting wet on a regular basis now the the least cost store though let me meet you over by the garage okay the least cost door in my house but also one of my favorites this is a fiberglass door insulated 20 minute fire rated it's separating my laundry kind of my wife's Office Space from my garage now this door pretty nice budget price point but here's how I made the kind of leap in air tightness that I was really looking for if you watch any of the videos about my house under construction I was building this the passive house standards I haven't gotten it rated but it's very very airtight and I thought about having a passive house manufacturer actually make me a custom door that would be crazy tight between my house and my garage but I frankly just didn't have it on my budget so this door a couple hundred dollar door and fiberglass you know probably in the 400 450 range solid nothing special in fact I need to clean it it's gotten dirty but here's how I jumped up the performance check out this this is a lock system from Endura that they call panel lock this is routed into the edge of the door and when you lock the door with just your standard Hardware by the way this is just m-tech Hardware it accepts any hardware when you flip that lock you're noticing right here there's no deadbolt this is just your standard um what they call that the standard catch but it actually comes out like a deadbolt and then these two fins in the panel lock extend as well and they're kind of shark fin shaped you can see they're angled and what's cool about this is on the jam this is also obviously their jam as well there's a roller system on these three strike plates and that roller system on the shark fin comes it pushes that door in place so I've got really good air tightness and when I did my blower door test I didn't see any leakage I couldn't feel any leakage around this door whatsoever I also have that articulating sill like you saw at the showroom a few minutes ago and then lastly this is something that I really like that's not standard you need to ask for it this is the replaceable dexil or RDS system this piece right here which coincidentally has gotten scratched at some point I did not realize that is super easy to replace and in fact I think I have a replacement seal but I stock to my attic in case this happened kind of funny that at my house I need to do that if you've seen their uh IBS displays they'll let you actually nail a sill with a hammer drop a brick on it scratch it up and in the past when I've had to replace Sills out when that happened huge pain because you actually usually have to Sawzall out the jam pull that out put a new one in there's a bunch of Caulking and it's at least two or three hours of a carpenter's time to really get it right then you got to get the Painter involved this on the other hand drop a putty knife in there and on the bottom here that putty knife articulates you pull that sill out and just pop a new one in with a dead blow hammer super easy very very easy fix all right guys that's the end of the video and my dog's whining in the background so we should probably cut it off big thanks to Endura for sponsoring today's video as I mentioned at the beginning I've been using their products for gosh over 20 years now in my builds and everything we talked about today is pretty reasonable in cost this panel lock system probably going to be around 200 bucks to you as the Builder as the as the end user the replaceable sill cap that we saw that's probably a 15 20 ad to get that the articulating the Z series articulating Sill a lot of people have Endura product standard in fact BFS if you buy through them that I've bought from for a long time they don't even give you an option they give you automatically in their prices they're especially for the custom Builders I should say the Endura frame saver jam and the standard sill from Endura so all you got to do is just double check that you've gotten the additional Endura parts and potentially consider panel lock too I really like this system standard Hardware better air tightness and better security too frankly you could throw a uh a battering ram with this thing and it wouldn't allow you in very easily at all guys if you're not currently a subscriber hit that subscribe button we've got new content here every Tuesday and every Friday follow me on Tick Tock or Instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the field show foreign [Music]

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 124,914

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build, cheap doors, best interior doors, interior doors, solid core, hollow core, front door, entry door, endura, door comparison

Id: KbPJb17ETfo

Length: 28min 3sec (1683 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022