Replacing our interior doors - planning


The whole family is sick today. We're laying around like limp dish rags. No projects this weekend.

blurry picture / blurry brain
 I had hoped to dig into the next reno project, replacing interior doors. Our current ones are simple, beat up, flat slabs. The doorknobs throughout the house don't match at all and some of the hinges are painted over. My wife asked if I'd do this as a birthday gift for her.

Unfortunately, it takes all the energy I have, just to put dishes in the dishwasher. I'm down to doing research while laying on the couch, between bouts of slipping into feverish sleep.  In the end, I don't even know if this post contains a single, coherent string of thought.

We're going to need a total of 5 interior doors, plus one for the garage. I'm pretty sure that one has to be metal for fire resistance.

Par for the course, our door openings are too small for standard size doors. I'll have to see if I can plane them down enough to fit, rather than tearing out all the trim and framing. I read a few articles about resizing doors, and a planer is apparently, by far the way to go. Of course, I don't have one, so that's going to be picked up specifically for this project. It will probably be something we use again in the future, but I wonder just how much use I'd find for it. I'm not sure which route to go; do I go high quality/price (DeWalt, Bosch, Makita, etc.), mid-grade (Porter Cable, Craftsman, Ryobi, Skil), or über cheap (Harbor Freight)? Would the Harbor freight last 5 doors x 4 sides each? Hmmmm...

As for the doors, I think we'll go with a simple hollow-core, six panel. We haven't visited the home centers to look at their in stock doors, but, I've been couch surfing-them. Here's the showdown:

The blue versus orange smack down.
 
I've never taken a bare door and installed hinges, latches and knobs. I'll probably need one of the hole saw door kits to be sure I'm right, I'm pondering routing out for the hinges by hand.
 
I think we're going to go a with satin nickel lever style
Maybe next weekend... Now, it's time for medicine and some hot tea.