Interior Door Installation McDonough GA

Interior Door Installation in McDonough, GA

Interior door installation in McDonough, GA is the cheapest door job in the house and the one most often done badly, because the jamb in an older house is rarely still square. Here is how to choose between hollow and solid core, prehung and slab, and what sizes to expect.

Hollow and solid core

Prehung or slab

Standard sizes

Old jambs

Interior door installation in McDonough, GA starts with the core

The core is what you are actually buying. Hollow core doors are light enough to hang on their own hinges with no trouble and cheap enough to do a whole house at once, and they pass sound like a sheet of card, because that is largely what is inside them. Solid core doors feel like a door, close with a thud and keep noise where it belongs, which is why they land on bedrooms, bathrooms and home offices first.

Hollow core, solid core and solid wood interior doors compared, with standard widths for McDonough GA houses — The three cores and the five standard widths. Our own diagram, not to scale.

Where each core usually ends up

Opening	Common choice	Why
Closets and pantries	Hollow core	Nothing to hear, nothing to carry
Bedrooms	Solid core where budget allows	Sound between rooms is the whole point
Bathrooms	Solid core	Same reason, plus the door feels substantial
Home office	Solid core	Calls and meetings through a hollow door carry
Laundry rooms	Solid core	Machines are the loudest thing in most houses
Older houses with original trim	Solid wood slab	Matches what is already there

Swipe the table sideways to see every column →

General practice rather than a code requirement. Weight matters: a solid core door on tired hinges will need the hinges upgraded too.

Prehung or slab in an older house

This is the decision that separates a good interior door job from a frustrating one. A slab reuses the jamb you already have, which keeps the casing and the paint lines intact. It only works if that jamb is square, the hinge mortises line up with the new door and the strike is where the latch expects it.

Check the jamb for square with a level on both sides and across the head.
Measure the door, not the opening, if you are buying a slab.
Count hinges and measure their size and the mortise depth, because a slab has to be mortised to match.
Look at the latch height and the strike position before ordering a pre-bored slab.
Expect a prehung unit's rough opening to run roughly two inches wider and a couple of inches taller than the door itself.
Budget for casing on at least one side with any prehung unit.

A room with a wood floor and a glazed door onto the yard — Swing space and floor finishes decide more interior door questions than the door itself does. Stock photo, not a local job.

Hardware, swing and the small decisions

Bore and backset

Pre-bored doors come with a 2 1/8 inch hole for the knob and a backset, the distance from the edge to the center of that hole, that is usually 2 3/8 or 2 3/4 inches. Buying hardware that matches saves a trip. The door hardware page covers the rest.

Which way it swings

Handing is set by which side the hinges are on and which way the door opens, and a prehung unit is built one way or the other. Stand in the opening facing the direction the door swings away from you and note which side the hinges fall. Get it wrong and the unit goes back.

Doors that are not doors

Bifolds, pocket doors and barn-style sliders all solve the swing-space problem differently. Pocket doors mean opening the wall, which is a bigger job than it looks and worth pricing separately before committing.

Interior doors in McDonough GA: frequently asked questions

What is the difference between hollow core and solid core doors?

A hollow core door is two thin skins over a cardboard honeycomb, so it is light, cheap and passes sound straight through. A solid core door has an engineered core between the skins, which makes it heavier, quieter and steadier in a doorway. Solid wood doors are a third category again, built from stiles, rails and panels.

What size are standard interior doors?

Widths run 24, 28, 30, 32 and 36 inches, nearly always 80 inches tall. Bedrooms and bathrooms are usually 30 or 32 inches, closets 24 or 28, and main openings 36 inches, which is also the width that suits a wheelchair. Older houses turn up odd sizes often enough that measuring beats assuming.

Should I buy a prehung door or just the slab?

A slab is cheaper and keeps your existing trim, which is worth preserving in an older house. A prehung unit brings its own jamb and hinges, which is the answer when the existing jamb is out of square, painted into immobility or split. The telltale is a door that only latches if you lift it.

Why does my interior door stick in summer?

Humidity. Wood doors and jambs take on moisture in a Georgia summer and swell, then shrink back in winter. A door that binds only in August is often better left alone or eased very slightly; a door that binds all year has a hinge, jamb or framing problem instead.

Can interior doors be replaced without touching the trim?

With a slab, yes. You reuse the jamb, the hinge mortises and the strike plate, so the casing stays untouched. That is the whole appeal in an older house with trim worth keeping. A prehung unit always means removing and refitting the casing on at least one side.