Interior Doors near you

Nearly every mass-produced interior door has composite wood inside it, and that puts it inside a federal emissions rule. EPA's regulation at 40 CFR part 770 contains formaldehyde emission standards, testing and certification provisions for the manufacture, distribution and sale of composite wood products, the component parts that contain them and the finished goods that contain them. The products covered are hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard and particleboard, and the agency states that after March 22, 2019 composite wood products must be labeled as TSCA Title VI compliant.

The labeling requirement is specific enough to be checked. Panels or bundles must carry the panel producer's name, the lot number, the number of the third-party certifier and a statement that the products are TSCA Title VI certified. Fabricators of finished goods must label every finished good they produce, or every box or bundle, with at minimum the fabricator's name, the date of production in month and year format and a statement that the goods are TSCA Title VI compliant, and importers, distributors and retailers must leave those labels intact. There is a de minimis exception for a finished good whose regulated composite wood content does not exceed 144 square inches based on the surface area of its largest face, which is far smaller than any door.

One point protects the trade rather than the homeowner, and it is useful to understand. The rule states that persons or entities in the construction trades are not fabricators by renovating or remodeling buildings, and are not retailers by selling, renovating or remodeling buildings. The carpenter hanging your doors is not the party required to label them; the label belongs on the product, so ask to see it on what is delivered rather than expecting the installer to produce one.

The CPSC standard is often assumed to be about exterior openings, and its own definitions say otherwise. A door, for the purposes of 16 CFR part 1201, is an assembly installed in an interior or exterior wall used as a means of human passage, so an interior glazed door is a covered product. Which test category applies depends on the glass: doors containing no single piece of glazing material greater than 9 square feet on one side are Category I, while doors containing any piece greater than that are Category II, together with shower doors and enclosures and bathtub doors and enclosures.

Bathrooms are where this matters most, because the enclosure is regulated directly. Shower doors and enclosures are defined as assemblies of one or more panels forming all or part of the wall or door of a shower stall, and bathtub doors and enclosures as assemblies installed on the lip of or immediately surrounding a bathtub. Both sit in Category II. The Commission has also issued an interpretation resolving an obvious ambiguity: it did not intend the standard to apply to glazing material in a window located over a bathtub or within a shower stall and in the exterior wall of a building, and confirms that the standard does not apply to such windows. That is a statement about this federal standard only, and says nothing about what the residential code adopted where you live requires in that location.

Two exemptions come up in older houses. The louvers of jalousie doors are exempt, and so are openings in doors through which a 3 inch diameter sphere is unable to pass, which is why small divided lites in an old interior door are treated differently from a single large pane. If you are replacing glass rather than the whole door, ask the glazier which category the assembly falls into and confirm the pane carries a permanent label.

Interior door work concentrates on exactly the surfaces the EPA's lead rule was written about. The Renovation, Repair and Painting rule applies to work in houses, apartments and child-occupied facilities built before 1978, and in general anyone paid to perform work that disturbs paint in that housing must be certified, with carpentry among the covered activities and firms barred from advertising or performing covered work without firm certification. The minor repair and maintenance exemption covers activities disturbing six square feet or less of paint per room inside, but the EPA notes that demolition of painted surfaces is always covered regardless of square footage, and taking out a painted door with its casing can move past that line quickly.

Paint testing is not required by the rule. What the EPA says is that unless you have documentation that the paint is not lead-based, the requirements apply, and that testing, if done, must be done by the appropriate qualified professional: EPA-recognized test kits by certified renovators, X-ray fluorescence instruments by certified inspectors or risk assessors. Firm certifications are good for five years, and several states administer their own authorized programs in place of the federal one.

Licensing is a state question, and for interior carpentry California names it directly: the C-6 cabinet, millwork and finish carpentry classification covers a contractor who makes cabinets, cases, sashes, doors, trims, nonbearing partitions and other items of finish carpentry, and who places, erects and finishes such cabinets and millwork in structures. Oregon generally requires anyone working for compensation in a construction activity involving improvements to real property to be licensed, and lists carpentry as an example. Washington requires registration with Labor and Industries plus a bond and insurance. Texas licenses no residential carpentry trade of this kind at all. One interior door is not like the others, though: the door between an attached garage and the living space is governed by the residential code your jurisdiction adopted, along with any landing or threshold requirements, so ask the building department what that door has to be before you buy a slab to match the rest of the hall.

A manufactured home built to HUD's standards is not governed by the local building code in the way a site-built house is, and the federal standard reaches all the way to the interior hardware. If you live in one, these requirements are the specification any replacement has to satisfy, so say so before ordering.

Interior door work is priced by the opening, and the openings are rarely identical. A slab into a sound jamb and a prehung unit with new casing are different amounts of carpentry. Solid-core doors weigh more and ask more of hinges and jambs. Pocket and barn conversions involve wall work rather than door work. Painting or staining on site adds days that have nothing to do with the doors themselves. A house built before 1978 adds containment and cleanup to every opening that has painted trim, and older homes often have jambs that are out of square, which is real work rather than an upsell.

The fair way to compare bids is to hold the scope constant: the same number of openings, the same core construction, the same hardware, prehung or slab stated per opening, casing included or not, finishing included or not, and disposal of the old doors settled.

LokalMatch is the introduction only. You describe the interior door job once, including how many openings, whether you want prehung units or slabs, and the approximate age of the house, and door installers and finish carpenters working in your area get in touch with you. Carpenters and installers pay LokalMatch for each request they take on. LokalMatch does not install doors, does not set prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so checking state licensing, insurance and lead-safe certification where it applies remains your step.