Interior door replacement, trim and baseboards in Tampa Bay.
New doors, trim and baseboards are the cheapest job that changes how a house feels. They are also the easiest to order wrong. A door is made to a size and a swing. A baseboard is cut to a floor that is not level. Interior door replacement lives in the measuring. The carpentry is the easy part.
Priced by written scope, never by the hour.
Interior door replacement is prehung or slab, and the choice decides everything.
Door pages show styles. None of them explains the two ways a door is sold. That choice decides whether it fits and closes. Here is what to ask before you buy from anyone, including us.
A prehung door comes in its own frame
The door is already hinged in a new jamb. The old jamb comes out and the new unit goes in plumb and square. The door closes right because the frame is new. It costs more and it fixes a crooked opening. Most replacements in older houses go this way.
A slab is just the door
A slab hangs on the old hinges in the old jamb. It costs less. It only works if the old frame is square, the hinges line up and the size is standard. In a house that has settled, that is rare. A slab in a crooked frame never latches right.
Standard sizes hide a lot of odd ones
Interior doors come 80 inches tall and 24 to 36 inches wide, in 2 inch steps. Older Tampa Bay houses have openings that are none of those. Every opening is measured on its own. A door ordered from one measurement fits one door.
Baseboards follow a floor that is not level
A baseboard is cut to the floor, not to the wall. Floors dip and rise. A good install scribes the bottom edge to the floor and caulks the top to the wall. A bad one shows a gap you can see from the couch.
The count decides the price. The profile decides the rest.
Two houses can order the same doors and get different numbers. Here is what actually moves the number on doors and trim.
How many doors, prehung or slab
Priced by the door. Prehung costs more per opening than a slab and comes with its own casing. Count your doors and note which frames are crooked. That gets you most of the way to a range.
Hollow, solid core or solid wood
Hollow core doors are the cheapest and sound like it. Solid core costs more, closes with a thud and blocks sound. Solid wood costs the most. The door is most of the price of this job.
Feet of trim and the profile
Baseboard and casing are priced by the foot. A plain 3 inch base is the base case. A tall 5 inch base with a cap, or a wide casing with a header, costs more per foot. It also takes longer to cut. Count the rooms.
Paint, and who does it
Primed trim still needs two coats. Doors need both sides. Pre finished doors cost more up front and skip the painting. The scope names whether paint is in, and who does it.
What gets measured before anything is ordered.
A door ordered wrong is a door you wait for twice. So the measuring comes first, and each item is written into a door schedule before the order goes in.
Every opening measured three ways
Width at top, middle and bottom. Height on both sides. Jamb depth to match the wall. Written into a schedule with the room name. The schedule goes with the order.
The swing and the handing decided
Which way the door opens and which side the hinges go. Written per door. A door hung the wrong way hits a light switch or blocks a closet. Fixing it after means a new door.
The frame checked for square
A crooked frame gets a prehung door. A square one can take a slab. We check each with a level and a square, and the schedule says which.
The floor checked for level along the baseboard
Where the floor dips, the baseboard gets scribed. Where a new floor is coming later, the baseboard waits or gets set to the new height. The scope says which.
Hardware picked once
Knobs or levers, the finish, and whether bedrooms lock. Chosen before the order, because the bore in the door is drilled to the hardware. Changing after means drilling again.
What is included, and where it ends.
A written scope is only worth something if it says where it stops. These are the lines we put in writing before anything is ordered.
How long the rooms are open.
The rooms stay usable. Doors come off in the morning and new ones go on the same day, room by room. The wait is for the doors to be made, and the maker sets that. Trim and baseboards are a day or two per floor. Paint adds days if it is in the scope.
When we tell you not to do it
Doors and trim are the cheapest job on this site. That makes them easy to sell to someone who needs more, or less. Here is where we say no, and why.
A slab in a frame that has moved
If the frame is out of square, a new slab will not latch and will rub the jamb. We will price the prehung unit and tell you why the slab is not on the list.
Baseboards before the new floor
If a new floor is coming next month, the baseboards wait. Set now, they are the wrong height later. The order is floor, then base. We say so and schedule it right.
New trim on walls about to be opened
If drywall work or wiring is planned for the same walls, the trim goes on last. Casing installed before the electrician comes through gets cut off. The sequence is written.
The doors are fine and only the paint is tired
Solid doors with square frames do not need replacing to look new. Painting them costs a fraction. We would rather tell you that than sell you doors.
Lifetime warranty on our workmanship.
If the work we did fails, we come back and fix it. That holds for as long as you own the home. On doors and trim it means the fit. Doors we hung stay square and latch, and trim we set stays tight.
A warranty is only worth what its exclusions say. Ours are above, in the same size type as the promise. Ask whoever you are talking to how long theirs runs, and get the number in writing.
Questions we actually get asked
Should I buy prehung doors or slabs?
Prehung if the old frames are crooked, damaged or a non standard size, which is most older Tampa Bay houses. Slabs if the frames are square and sound and you want to keep the casing. We check each opening and the schedule says which.
What is a standard interior door size?
80 inches tall and 24 to 36 inches wide, in 2 inch steps. Bedrooms are usually 30 or 32. Older houses often have odd sizes. Every opening gets measured, because a door is ordered to the opening, not to the old door.
Hollow core or solid core?
Hollow core costs less and is light and thin sounding. Solid core costs more, blocks sound and feels like a real door. For bedrooms and bathrooms most people go solid core once they hear the difference.
How tall should baseboards be?
Taller than they used to be. Three and a quarter inch is the old standard. Five to six inch base is common now in living areas and it makes ceilings look taller. The profile is your choice and the scope names it per room.
Can you match my existing trim?
Often, yes. Common profiles are still made. If yours is old or custom, we source the closest match and show it to you before ordering. Painting all the trim in the room hides small differences.
Do you paint the doors and trim?
If the scope names it, yes. Primed doors and trim need two coats, both sides on doors. Pre finished doors cost more and skip the painting. Either way, the paint plan is written before the order.
The other home remodeling services
Where we work
Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota counties. If your town is not on this list, call and ask: the answer is often yes.
A walkthrough, then a written scope with one closed price.
Never hourly, never a verbal figure, and our workmanship carries a lifetime warranty. Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota counties.