One of our previous featured homeowners changed the look of her interior doors and I was inspired to find more mobile home door repairs and makeover ideas.
In this article, we cover a few different mobile home door repairs to fix noisy hinges, broken doorknobs, and sticking doors. We also show you how to repair dents in metal doors along with some smart mobile home door makeover ideas.
Mobile Home Door Repairs
In all the mobile homes that we lived in over the years all the interior mobile home doors were made of a smooth laminate with that fake wood design and no dimension at all. The doorknobs were either plastic with a push-button lock or metal with a twist lock.
Sticky Doors
If your mobile home doors stick excessively if could be a sign that your home needs to be releveled. Learn more about mobile home leveling issues here. Sticking
It could also just mean that your hinges could use a little love and are sticking due to swelling or rust.
Hinges can be adjusted or replaced on old doors.
This article on This Old House covers sticky doors.
This article from Family Handyman shows you how to replace hinges and has many photos to guide you through the process.
Door Knob Won’t Turn or Lock
If your doorknob doesn’t seem to turn or doesn’t want to lock or unlock, something as simple as lubricating it with some W-D 40 could do the trick. Of course, you can replace your doorknob fairly quickly and easily. You can buy a stainless steel exterior mobile home door knob with lock for less than $15 here.
Changing your knob/lock can be an easy fix.
This video is a good resource to learn how to quickly replace your mobile home doorknob:
Fixing Dents in Metal Doors
Metal exterior doors tend to get dents easily. Fortunately, you can use Bondo to make them disappear. You can use a scrap block with 120 to 150 grit sandpaper to sand the dried Bondo smooth and then paint it with metal paint.
Mobile Home Door Makeover Ideas
Buying new mobile home doors is an investment and sometimes we just don’t have the money to get a new one. This budget-friendly project can help you. We found this affordable exterior mobile home door makeover on Home Talk (link unknown).
If a new door isn’t in the budget yet you can still give them an update on a budget. This homeowner had a piece of vinyl laminated paneling that’sd popular for bathrooms and added it to the old exterior mobile home door he had.
The homeowner cut the paneling to size and pre-drilled the necessary holes for the locks. attached the new exterior skin using small white paneling nails that matched the paneling.
Viola! The old mobile home door has a fresh new look that only cost a few dollars. The door looks great to have only cost a few dollars!
This is a good project only if your mobile home door is not warped. If you have a warped door it will probably need to be replaced.
Mobile Home Door Makeover Ideas
You can makeover interior mobile home doors, too. Mobile home interior doors are also shorter and more narrow than the doors you can find at Lowe’s so you’ll want to buy them from a mobile home supply store whenever possible. Otherwise, you will have to retrofit them to work by cutting the bottom of the door.
But, if there’s nothing wrong with your interior doors and you just want to give them a new look these two projects are perfect.
My dad’s new double wide, the interior doors are much different than our 1978 mobile home. They are wider and taller and most importantly they have 6-dimensional panels and a 6 inch tall vent in the bottom of every interior door. They are all beautiful doors and the vents seem to be a smart addition to help circulate air.
Adding Dimension with Trim
We featured Shannon’s great double-wide manufactured home makeover a couple of years ago. Her interior door makeover is one of our favorite projects of all time. It’s so simple yet so significant! It completely changes the look of the door.
Shannon nailed trim to make the door appear to be the more expensive panel door. The trim, nails, and paint will cost you less than a good pizza!
Adding Depth with Beadboard
This next homeowner is on her way to a similar mobile home door makeover. She glued thin beadboard panels to the door and then trimmed it out.
This image shows her in the process of painting the door. It makes a huge difference!
Doors are much more important than homeowners realize. Cheap plain doors can make a home appear cheap. These mobile home door repairs and makeover ideas should help you make your doors function and look better.
Have you changed the look of your mobile home doors? Have a cool tip we can add to help homeowners with their doors? Please add it in the comments below.
As always, thank you for reading Mobile Home Living!
Glad to have found this website. Have lived in a double wide for ten years now.
I painted my interior doors with glossy trim paint from Lowe’s. They don’t look good because all the brush strokes show. I’m going to have to repaint what’s the best paint to use
Hi Elizabeth! There is an additive that you can add to the paint. I’ve used a product called Flood on a cabinet that worked very well. That way, you can use the same paint (just make sure you get the correct additive for glossy paint – there are several brands). Click here for an affiliate link for Flood on Amazon
Best of luck!
who fixes mobile home floors to be completely level??
Hi Karen,
I’m not sure how to answer. Mobile homes are usually never 100% level due to their cambered chassis but it should only be off a couple of inches or so at most. If the subfloor isn’t perfectly level you can build it up but that should only be done for slight unleveled areas. As far as finding someone that can help repair flooring, I would call your local flooring companies. National companies sometimes have rules against working on manufactured homes but locally owned companies will usually do it. If that fails, call your local mobile home supply stores and home dealerships for recommendations.
Hope that helps!
I was told I couldn’t paint my doors because they only have fake wood panels. What’s the procedure to painting them?
Hi Debbie,
You’d just need to clean them really well and find primer and paint that works on laminate. Kilz, Behr, and Gripper seem to be the most popular brands for paint and primer in one. You can use the same steps for painting laminated cabinets in this article. (PS paints have gotten a lot better over the last few years. They have better bond/adhesives and pigmentation so don’t let a past experience convince you that it won’t work.)
Best of luck!
Always inspiring!!