New doors done properly: hanging, hardware and hiring the right person

What door installation involves

Hanging a door means trimming the slab to fit the opening, cutting in hinges, fitting the lockset, and adjusting until the door swings and latches cleanly. External doors add weather seals and serious locks; older homes add out-of-square frames that need packing and patience. Carpenters and dedicated door installers do this work day in, day out.

The simple case is a new door in an existing frame. The bigger jobs — cutting a brand-new opening through a wall, resizing an opening, or replacing a rotten frame along with the door — are proper carpentry with framing, linings and architraves involved, and can cost more in labour than the door itself.

A feel for the numbers

An internal hollow-core swap with new hardware typically lands in the few-hundred-dollar zone all-in. Solid-core and standard external doors sit meaningfully higher once a quality lockset and seals are included, and premium entry doors — pivots, oversized designer slabs — or doors into newly cut openings can run to several thousand.

Hardware is its own line: locksets run from bargain basics to serious money for smart or designer handles. The cheapest real saving is batching — hanging several doors in one visit brings the per-door labour down substantially, so replace the whole hallway's worth at once rather than one a year. All figures indicative; your frames will have opinions.

Who to hire and what good looks like

For hanging doors in existing openings, you're hiring a carpenter or handyman-carpenter, and a licence is generally not required at this scale — though larger building work involving new structural openings is state-regulated, so check when the job grows. A locksmith is the specialist if the job is really about locks and security rather than the door.

Good signs: they measure the opening rather than quoting blind, they ask whether the frame is square and what's behind the wall before promising a new opening, and their quote states door, hardware and labour separately. On external doors, someone who talks unprompted about seals, security and the threshold knows their craft.

Mistakes to avoid

Door regrets are mostly ordering regrets — the wrong size, the wrong spec for the location, or a bargain door that cost double by the time it fitted.

• Ordering non-standard door sizes when the frame could take a stock size — special orders cost more and take weeks
• Using an internal-grade door in an external opening; weather destroys it
• Paying one-off visit rates for each door instead of batching several into one visit
• Skimping on the lockset and seals on an entry door — that's where security and draughts are decided
• Assuming a new opening is simple; walls hide wiring, plumbing and sometimes structure