We refinished our upstairs bathroom last winter, and since it turned out so great decided to also replace our old, ugly hollow-core bathroom door. We had to special order a Mastercraft door, since we have plaster walls that are thicker than standard. We also ordered it pre-finished. When we got it home, we found that the door frame had not been finished, only the door itself. Okay, we took care of that ourselves... No big deal. After the door was installed, it made the rest of the doors in the hallway look pretty shabby, so we decided to make the leap and replace all the doors in the house. All 12 doors.
Since we had so many doors to replace, and so many would be special order, we thought that we'd try to save some money and finish them ourselves. What a huge mistake that turned out to be!
For one thing, the quality and the thickness of the vaneer is horrible. You don't dare do any sanding except by hand, or you'll burn through the vaneer. The vaneer is so rough that you have to stain it with a brush-if you use a cloth it pulls fibers from it that stick to the vaneer. When you put the polyurithane on, it bubbles. If you sand the bubbles off and re-apply the poly, it bubbles again. The only way around it is to put on two coats of poly, then sand. The third coat of poly seems to be the charm. We wondered if the vaneer is so thin that when you apply the poly it reacts with the glue used to hold the vaneer on.
Then there's the issue of the door frames. They are rediculously flimsy, which makes it extremely difficult to put them up. They flop around like a fish. The sturdyest part of the frame is the cardboard that they staple around the corners. They would've been better off making the frames out of that! The worst problem-by far-is the dimensions of the doors and frames. If you order a thirty inch door, you'd kinda expect that the frame would be at least a quarter of an inch wider, giving you one eight of an inch on each side to work with. Not with these doors! We had several doors that were the same size as the frame, which meant that we had to split the frame in the corners and pull it apart in order to make the door fit! Which gives you an eighth inch gap in the corners. We also had situations where the verticle frame boards where too long, and the stop trim on the horizontal frame boards was cut too short.
These doors sound like a great deal when they're advertised. But by the time you get done waiting for the special ordered doors to arrive (two week wait and one hundred dollars extra per door), buying the supplies needed to finish them, and rebuilding the frames to make them fit, it's no deal at all! Save yourself a lot of aggrivation and don't buy these doors!!!
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