The Best Custom Interior Doors and Where to Get Them!

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to Daylight Savings Time if you’re in a location that honors that. It’s the annual event, either the first or second Sunday in March, that lets us know that spring is on the way. In fact, I just looked at the 10-day forecast, and I see temps in the 50s, 60s and as high as 70 on Tuesday! Bring it on!!!

 

Okay, we need to move on with the Complete Shopping List for everything I used in my renovation. If you’d like to read part 1, you can find it here.

 

However, before we do that, we need to go over all of the custom interior doors!

 

One of my favorite parts of the renovation is the custom doors. To begin with, let’s focus on the closet and embrasure doors. The doors downstairs, except for the small one in the bedroom, are all 96″ high.

Spectacular and they give this area the historical I wanted!

The door under the stairs in the bedroom had to be made 92″. However, it worked out because the top of the door casing is the same height as the top of the doorway.

 

Downstairs, there are nine new doors, the four embrasure doors (the pocket pivot hinge (Harmon Hinge) doors closing off the bedroom and bathroom.

 

The other five doors are in the two entries and the aforementioned bedroom door leading to a small closet under the stairs.

 

Above is one of the Trustile doors open after the shelves were added last year.

 

Above is the 1978 hideous door that I had Eugene add the panel moulding. It is the same moulding we used for the tall basecap in the den.

All of these doors are three-panel doors. I chose this style because that is what the original doors have. And by original, I mean the 1880 doors. There are still two of those. There are also two entry doors that are 80″ high and an existing bathroom door, upstairs, from circa 2015 that is 78″ high.

Upstairs, there are four more doors. In the upstairs entry are two plain slab doors that are the jib doors.

 

Right after they were installed in May 2024.

Below is the den before.

 

The den originally had the most hideous levered doors that were replaced with a pair of 3-panel doors that are 90″ high.

 

We couldn’t go the full height because of the eight-foot-high closet ceiling. And while the other two doors are both 108″ high, the closet doors are still considerably higher than the typical 80″ doors and look 1000% better.

 

While the doors are one of my favorite parts* of my renovation, they were one of the biggest headaches.

 

As you will soon come to learn, there are at least a dozen *”favorite parts,” and probably more. However, the doors are up there because the extra-tall height was so worth it.
In fact, if you have an eight-foot ceiling, you can go up another four inches and do an 84″ door. I know it’s only 4″-6″ higher than the typical 78″-80″ standard door, but if your budget allows, it will help to raise the ceiling height and give your home a more custom look.

 

All of the doors were made by Trustile except for the four embrasure doors that Select Door made.

 

While all of the doors are of exceptional quality, the experience of ordering was night and day.

First of all, I went with my contractor’s rec for a store that would act as the agent for the door order. I won’t bore you with the details, but we lost over 3 months because the first two companies were of no help. I had my reservations about the door place in DORchester, because I read the word VINYL in about four places on their website. To learn more details please read this post from 2024.

 

Finally, in December, we began working with a guy we will call Moron Myron at a place we’ll call DoorsAren’tUs.

 

It was still difficult, and really, we weren’t doing anything outlandish. I won’t go into all of the aggravation Myron put us through, but when it came to the embrasure doors, his estimate was $10,000 for the four of them, and they are only 15″ wide. That can’t be.

 

So, I called the company I wanted my contractor to look at the previous summer– Select Door,

(That links to the original post from May 2023, and there’s a lot there.)
Select Door gave me two sources to order the doors from, and I found a fantastic rep, Marcia, at a shop in Berwick, Maine called Little Harbor Window. Marcia was totally on top of things, knew what she was talking about and was exceedingly helpful. In addition, the same four doors only cost $6,000. Instead of months like it took with Myron, everything was on order in a week with Marcia.

 

I wish I had ordered all of the doors through Little Harbor Window and I wished I had known about them in July of 2023.

 

Therefore, if you need custom doors, I wouldn’t hesitate to work with them, especially if you’re in the northeast.

The irony is that if I had looked into the doors myself that summer when I discovered Select Door through my embrasure door research, I would’ve saved myself a considerable amount of pain.

 

Below are the specs for the embrasure doors.

 

Marcia gave me a choice of at least a dozen mouldings for the inset of the panels. Above is the one we chose. I wanted something different than the big bolection moulding for the closet doors. But a moulding that was closer to the rest of the applied wall panel moulding. That was their CM0038 moulding. I love the way it turned out. (Below)

Another important point about all of the interior doors is that they are 1-3/4″ thick.

 

Typical stock interior doors are 1-3/8″ thick. That half inch is significant and adds so much to the luxurious feel. In addition, they are solid-core doors; therefore, they help block the sound very well. I realize these doors are much more expensive, but if you can swing it, they are so worth it.
The Trustile Doors are the TS3070 in MDF with Bolection (BM) moulding and Flat (C) panel. 

The bolection moulding is just the right size for the closet doors.

Here, you can see the door style with the bolection moulding clearly.

Despite the trouble, I do adore the Trustile Doors. However, Select Door via Little Harbor Window in Maine could’ve given me basically the same thing.

The seven regular doors from Trustile came with Baldwin Hinges. Frankly, those hinges suck. At least three of them lost their pins, and the entire hinge had to be replaced. I don’t understand how that happened, but since then, everything’s held together.

I am going to continue this for next time because I still need to discuss the rest of the hinges as well as the doorknobs!

 

Alas, the time just jumped ahead an hour, and I need to wrap this up for now.

Then, I will be able to continue with the complete renovation list.

For those that are interested, I wrote some more information about the White House renewal project and what happened as a result of the hearing. There has been a lot of misunderstanding and hopefully, I’ve cleared some things up. You can read all about that here.

xo,

 

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Thank you so much!

I very much appreciate your help and support!