Morning all
Bought 3 new internal doors for the house. My mate, who’s a chippy, came to fit them, but when he saw them said he would’nt in case the veneer split when sawing/planing. Now, he’s more of a site chippy than a joiner, so I got in a joiner to have a look, he quoted(sit down) £220 to fit them. After much debate with Mrs houndlegs we agreed we’d stump up for a tidy job. However, after promising to get back to us 3 days ago, he has’nt bothered and I aint chasing him. I’ve got a few more to try over the weekend, but how difficult is it to do yourself? Surely the veneer isnt going to split with a bit of sawing or planing is it? I’ve seen people on the web advising to score the veneer first with a good blade, then tape over it before cutting,sounds reasonable to me. I’ve fitted the odd door before, but they were cheap and if I messed up it wasnt the end of the world,also they are never going to be a perfect 2 pence coin fit because the frame is already a bit wider than that, we may have to make do with 3 or 4 mm gaps.
So, do I have at them myself? any tips? Any one know a good carpenter/joiner near Abertillery?
I should have painted the old buggers 🙂

Its about 5 years ago but we had 8 engineered doors hung for about £350.

They can be very very heavy which makes the job a lot harded, especially if you have to carry them outside to machine off material.

I am pretty sure the guy should have charged us more in hindsight. God only knows how he could carry them around on his own.

I paid £80 for 2 doors.

The main issue with engineered doors is if you have an odd sized frame. You can only trim off a certain amount of wood as the veneer strip is only a few mm thick so bodging a larger door into a smaller frame is difficult, although my joiner found a way to do it. Under the veneer its just particle board or similar so won’t take a screw.

A real timber door can be trimmed much much more, although it will invalidate your ‘warranty’ for all its worth.

If they’re standard doors fitting in standard frames, with standard tolerances and square then I can’t see why they’d be more expensive to fit.