I don't understand why your contractor and painter recommended new doors without warning that the cost of buying and fitting them to the existing openings will be at least as expensive as doing extra prep work on the old doors.

If you expect an absolutely smooth paint job, new Masonite doors might be your best choice. If you prefer the character of solid wood doors, keep the old ones.

Here's something to know about paneled doors: the panels are not fastened or glued to the stiles and rails. This is so they can expand and contract without splitting due to changes in humidity. It isn't noticeable with a stained finish, but painted panels eventually show a hairline crack around the edges.

im puzzled what they mean by "imperfections" - what exactly are they are expecting to see?. you want painted wood to look like painted wood. The look of the grain under the paint is part of its charm. The prep work is prob what costs more, esp if theres a hard shiny finish on it. But I cant imagine it costing more than new doors. ... esp since unlike trim, cabinets, etc its easy to take doors down and run them through a sander to roughen the surface and remove the gloss

By "imperfections", they probably mean dents and dings from 33 years of use.

If you paint, do it in winter time, when the wood panels have contracted; you'll see fewer hairline cracks that way.

why Dover White and not a brighter white?

Solid wood doors are fine to paint. replacing them with what, the cheapo hollow doors?? no thanks. keep what you have and prep them properly before painting. glossier paint is easier to clean. Use BM Advance or SW ProClassic. both of these work great on wood and wood trim. To make it quicker, use the spray primer first. a lot easier than brushing on the primer coat. After it dries, give a fine sanding w/220 grit to make it super smooth. wipe clean. now paint.

Paint or no paint, keep the solid wood doors. Replacing those with comparable solid wood doors will be expensive. That was the recommendation just so the surface can be smooth...?

If the doors have nicks and dents in them, if you want to be nitpicky you can fill them with wood filler or Bondo or something and sand to level out.

Also, make sure to take the doors down and remove hardware before painting. I want to throttle the previous owners of our house because they cheaped out and painted all the doors in place, which means painted hinges and painted doorknobs and it's AWFUL.

Keep the existing doors as they will be of higher quality than most any paint grade doors that your contractor would install. Because they are 6-panel, and not flat slabs, they have some interest and the surface is broken up so that means that they are a better choice for painting from an appearance standpoint. In addition, whatever dings or imperfections exist with the current doors can easily be filled and sanded flat. You may end up with a better result if you have the doors spray painted at a finishing shop, although I like the look of hand-painted if the painter is competent enough to avoid drips on a door with trim details.

To me the choices are clear: 1) keep the quality existing doors, paint them, and have a classy result, or 2) trash the existing doors, spend a lot more money for new doors of lower quality and interest, as well as spend a lot of time/money fitting the new doors to the existing jambs (or tear out the existing jambs and replace with new jamb/door units), and end up with an adequate result.

I have 80+ year old fir doors in my house I painted and they look fine, dents and dings give them character. I did strip them down, then primed, and painted them.

Paint the ones you have they are a much better quality door and certainly makes no sense to add them to the pile of never ending building materials in the land fill.

Have them paint one door and see how it looks.

Thanks to everyone who replied! I really appreciate your feedback. Couple of additional questions, if you have time:

1. Do you feel it is a bad idea to paint Douglas fir, rather than stain it? My husband thinks I am crazy for wanting to paint stained doors. FYI: The 1985 house that we moved into has stained molding, doors, and trim throughout. I am updating the house with taller molding and painting the molding, doors, and trim white. I'm also purchasing Emtek Delaware levers with sideplate: https://emtek.com/sideplate-locks/delaware-9-nonkey.

2. I'd like to convert all of our bi-fold closet doors to French doors. Again, the contractor tells me that it would be cheaper to purchase a pre-hung, solid-core door made

of wood veneer than to convert the old doors. However, our current doors are solid Douglas Fir, and I don't want to replace with cheap doors. I've included photos.

Thoughts??

Wow those are great doors! Yeah, no need to paint them.

My parents have stained solid wood doors with white casing and trim (and formerly white walls as well) and it's a very good look. I'm going for something similar for the third floor of my Victorian - white trim, off-white walls, and stained wood doors (they are currently painted white (badly) and it's gonna be a huge stripping job that I'm not looking forward to).

You seem to be strongly leaning toward painting them, but now that I see them I think it would be sad to cover up that gorgeous wood. Let me suggest that you paint all the trim and the jambs, and leave the doors natural. That is what I have in my house. And having moved from a house where all the doors were painted, I can say that I much prefer what I have now:

Whatever you do, don't let anyone talk you into ditching those wonderful doors!

I have solid wood doors that we bought over 10 years ago. Alder. I stained them. everything else is painted white (molding/baseboards/crown) and it looks nice. why don't you wait until you get all the new trim in and painted, and then decide whether you want to paint them. It's fine to leave them wood since they look decent enough. if they were those cheap pine, or yellow stained doors, I'd say paint them, but yours look in decent shape. you can always update the hardware.

Oh what I'd do to have your solid wood doors. Yes to painting trim, leaving these gorgeous doors as is. Quality wins!

Yeah that was honestly my thought too - though I think he'd keep them around to upsell to another client. Probably would get more money "sourcing" them for some other client (with markup) than selling them to salvage. I guess he figured that if the doors were painted, they could be any old doors and you wouldn't necessarily mind if they weren't the same doors...

So yeah, keep them either way. It's really not hard to filler and sand imperfections before painting (I did it a ton for design prototypes in school), or save yourself the trouble and enjoy your beautiful wood doors for years to come.

I think you have some lazy workmen. They just want you to buy pre-painted/pre-hung masonite doors so it will be easy for THEM! And they will be utter crap.

Problem is in todays world people think real wood is of lesser quality because it looks like real wood.

Look at all the posts on here about how people actually prefer the perfect lesser quality options available. So your contractor is probably used to hearing all these complaints from people who THINK they know what quality is.

Real wood moves and this means you will have cracks, unpainted areas showing and split seams. This is what your contractor is trying to get across. Also the prep will cost more depending on what your doors need.

UPDATE: We ended up painting the original doors and they turned out amazing! Thank you to everyone who posted a comment.