I own a rental house that appears to have interior doors that are covered with dark wood grain vinyl film. It's coming off in places and I'm looking for self adhesive vinyl wide enough to recover the doors. So far all I can find is contact paper that's 18" wide, I need it to be at least 30" wide. Anyone know where I can find it?

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Lindavald,

An alternate solution: Get new doors. Interior hollow-core door slabs cost less than $30 each. Install is simply a matter of attaching to the existing hinges with maybe a little mortising involved. A brand new door is certainly much more 'high-end" than trying to refurbish an old door by sticking a vinyl skin on to it - could make that house rent faster or for more.

You've got a very inexpensive hollow core door, and if it were me, I'd be inclined to paint it to get some extra years out of it. You see, I think I know the kinda stuff you want to stick onto the door. It's called "Mac Tac" and it comes with different designs on it. Trying to get that stuff on smoothly without any creases or air bubbles under it is gonna be like fighting with a bear.

Instead of using Mac Tac, consider just taking the door off it's hinges, supporting it horizontally on two chairs, removing the lock set and masking off the hinges. Then just prime the door with an oil based primer and then top coat with a semigloss oil based paint (if you can still get oil based paint where you live) and then you can at least maintain the appearance of that door by repainting if and when necessary.

Jaybee makes hanging new doors sound much easier than it is. "Maybe a little mortising involved" means cutting two mortises at the right locations, flat and to the same depth. If you can do that freehand with a hammer and chisel, you're a better man than me. And, you need to do a similar thing for the latch on the other side of the door. It takes a fair bit of expertise to hang doors properly, and I would consider hanging doors to be a relatively advanced DIY project.

Most new homeowners aren't aware of it, but a door will be cut differently on the hinge edge compared to the latch edge. The hinge edge will be cut square, but the latch edge will be cut at a slight bevel to account for the fact that the distance between diagonal corners of a door will be slightly longer than the width of the door. Consequently, one side of a door is actually slightly narrower than the opposite side of that same door to make the distance from the hinge axis to the opposite corner of the door about the same distance as from the hinge axis to the opposite side of the door. If you get up on a chair and look closely at the top of a properly hung door, you'll see what I mean.

Similarily, if it's a hollow core door, there will also be a top and bottom to the door that won't be obvious until you determine which is the hinge side and which is the latch side. That is, there will be solid wood blocking inside the door where the lock set goes, but only on the latch side of the door. So, if you aren't aware of this, you can end up ruining the door, even though it looks perfectly fine to an untrained eye.

Hanging doors, in my view, is a project for experienced DIY'ers. If you don't consider yourself in that category, then you can save much of the cost of new doors by staining and varnishing the doors yourself. But, get a professional carpenter with lots of "finish carpentry" experience (which will include hanging doors) to install the doors for you.

Or, just paint the doors you have to get more life out of them.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

IMPHO those old hollow-core doors were not worth the $10 they originally cost (slabs are $25-30 now.) there is no fire resistance at all with those things. cut them up to toss in the firepit, they're going in two minutes, and gone in three. and the hinges and hardware on them are creepy, most likely.

plain solid prehung mystery-wood doors would be where I'd go with this. rentals get more abuse, probably more fights and stuff thrown against them. a solid door with a ding might be steamed out with an iron, else you drill a little hole in there for an anchor plug, fill it with bondo, sand, and repaint for maintenance.

Cheap hollow core doors in a rental is a sure way to keep busy replacing them.

quote:

Originally posted by Lindavald:
I own a rental house that appears to have interior doors that are covered with dark wood grain vinyl film. It's coming off in places and I'm looking for self adhesive vinyl wide enough to recover the doors. So far all I can find is contact paper that's 18" wide, I need it to be at least 30" wide. Anyone know where I can find it?

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