Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. (previously Home Door Enterprise) – Great Door Installation Company in Singapore

Whenever I go to our master bedroom toilet, I will admire our “Classic French Door” installed by Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. (previously known as “Home Door Enterprise”). We engaged this door installation vendor to install all the doors for our new BTO house, and this is our complete review of the company. This article was last updated on 03 February 2020 with the current condition of the doors, see bottom of this article.

Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd.

Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. (formerly known as “Home Door Enterprise”) is a door installation company in Singapore. We actually discovered them through Carousell. We decided to engage the company’s service because it has 100% positive reviews (total 99 reviews) on Carousell. The prices seemed quite affordable too.

After speaking to Kelvin, we found out that Home Door Enterprise is a small local company run by Kelvin and his father (Ah An). Ah An is a door veteran who has over 20 years of experience in the industry. All their door materials are sourced from local suppliers, which means a faster turnaround for creating the doors. Our four doors took about one week to manufacture. A few days later, the workers came down for installation. Therefore it took about 1.5 weeks in total from the point of confirmation to our door installation.

Great Service by Kelvin!

Throughout the door installation process, Kelvin replied us very promptly whenever we had queries about the doors – he always replied within 10 minutes or less! He was very patient and answered every single one of our queries. At first it was slightly confusing to understand the various types of doors available, but soon I figured it out. You can refer to the below section to find out more.

Four Types of Door

Home Door Enterprise offers 4 types of doors:

1. Veneer Plywood Door

“Veneer” is a very thin slice of decorative wood that is glued onto wood panels. “Plywood” is a type of engineered wood formed from thin layers of wood glued together using resin. Therefore “Veneer Plywood Door” is basically veneer glued on plywood. The door is available as Hollow, Semi-solid and Solid core (more on this later).

This is a popular type of door in Singapore, though it is relatively expensive. However, the main reason why we didn’t choose this door was because we wanted to paint our doors white. If we chose a veneer door, we would be limited to the veneer designs since it is not possible to paint over the door.

2. Nyatoh Timber Door

“Nyatoh” is a type of durable and affordable wood from countries like Indonesia, Philippines and India. Therefore, the “Nyatoh Timber Door” is a type of solid-wood door that is extremely durable. Due to its high strength, it is suitable for use as an exterior main door for security. However, it is also the most expensive type of door.

We didn’t go with this because we were only looking to install interior doors, which didn’t need to be of such high quality. Also, Nyatoh Timber Door has a very limited selection of just three color tones: Light walnut, Dark walnut, and Natural.

3. Nyatoh Plywood Door

Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. also offers a type of door called “Nyatoh Plywood Door”, which is made from a thin layer of Nyatoh wood glued on plywood. It is significantly cheaper than a Nyatoh Timber Door. It can be painted with normal colour paints (in addition to the 3 color tones for Nyatoh Timber Door). Like the veneer door, this is also available in Hollow, Semi-solid and Solid core.

4. Classic Door

The Classic Door was the door of our choice! This door is made from chipboard, also known as low-density fibreboard (LDF) or particleboard. This is a type of engineered wood made from mixing wood particles and resin together, and then compressing the mixture into a sheet. The Classic Door has various types of designs, and can be painted over. It is available in hollow core or solid core. We went with the solid core.

We chose this door because we really liked the designs of the classic doors listed on Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd.’s Carousell page. And it can be painted with any color of our choice. This was very important because we wanted to paint our doors white to match our house’s color theme.

Even though chipboard is considered to be a relatively weak material, we still decided to go with this type of door because we did not require superior wood for our interior doors. The chipboard quality was definitely sufficient for our daily needs.

As mentioned earlier, the classic door is available in hollow or solid core. A “hollow core” door is simply a honeycomb cardboard encased by chipboard on the exterior. A “solid core” is made fully from chipboard. We went with the solid core for two main reasons. Firstly, it is a lot more soundproof than a hollow core door. As you can imagine, it would be very easy for sound to pass through a honeycomb cardboard that has many holes. This would be quite annoying if one of us was working in the study-room or trying to sleep in our bedroom, while someone else was watching television shows in the living room. Secondly, we were using the classic doors for our toilets too, and a hollow core chipboard door would easily be damaged by moisture.

The price of a normal classic swing door is listed as $150 on Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd.’s Carousell page, but when we asked Kelvin for the price, he quoted us a price that was about 50% higher. When we questioned him, he explained that the Carousell listing was for old HDB flats, while our house was a new BTO. This was a very minor issue but I guess it would be better if he specified the door prices for both old and new HDB houses on Carousell.

Site Visit

Painted wood samples

After we confirmed our orders, Kelvin came down to our house with his father (Ah An). They were both very nice people and it was a pleasant experience dealing with them. Ah An took measurements of our door frames, while Kelvin showed us various classic door designs, color samples, and lock-sets pictures. Other than showing us paint color samples from a brochure, Kelvin even brought along actual painted wood samples to give us a better idea of the color tone. We didn’t buy our lock-sets from Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. because we got them from Shanghai Tong Lee Hardware Pte Ltd, an old school hardware shop that sells a wide variety of home fittings and tools. After deciding the door designs and color, we paid 50% deposit in cash.

Installation

Painting the doors with sealer and paint

A few days later, two workers from Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. came down to install the doors. They had to do several things: paint the doors, paint our door frames, fit the hinges, cut a hole for the lock-set, and install the doors. Basically, all the post-work on the door was done onsite at our house. Presumably this was because they didn’t want to complete work at the factory and damage / dirty the finished door during transport.

The workers were very efficient and the installation went on relatively smoothly. They painted a layer of sealer on our door before painting the actual color, which was good because this meant the paint would last longer.

There was an incident where one of the workers accidentally knocked against our false ceiling while carrying the door. These caused 3 visible dents but luckily our renovation was not over yet, so we could still ask our contractor to patch up the spots.

It is important to take note that other renovation works cannot take place during door installation. This is because dust or dirt may stick onto the paint and damage the paint job. The paint will take at least a few hours to dry, so it is best not to have any renovation works going on during the day. We learned this the hard way because we had scheduled our housing cleaning on the same day, which we had to reschedule.

After the installation, Kelvin texted us to check if everything was ok; another example of his great service.

Our Classic Doors

Master Bedroom (left) and Common Toilet (right) doors

Study Room door

Common Toilet Door

For our master bedroom, studyroom and common toilet, we went with the Classic Door design ($230). I liked the Victorian design very much, and it blended nicely with the theme of our house. The elegant gold door knob / lock-set is from Shanghai Tong Lee Hardware.

Our Classic French Door!

The above is Raevian’s favourite door in the house, the Classic French Door* ($590)! We installed it for our master bedroom toilet. It looks really classy and elegant, and we love the way the two separate doors swing outwards (it is possible to swing inwards as well). Coupled with the stylish gold doorknob, this is a really pretty door that makes me want to go to the bathroom every day (ok I exaggerate).

*technically it is not really a French Door since it doesn’t have transparent or translucent panels, but we don’t stress over nomenclature

Conclusion

On the whole, we had a wonderful experience with Kelvin and Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. (previously Home Door Enterprise). Kelvin provided great service and the prices were very reasonable too. Other than the few minor issues mentioned above, the whole door installation process was very smooth. We highly recommend this awesome father and son company if you are looking to install doors.

Solid Door Construction Pte. Ltd. (previously Home Door Enterprise)
Phone Number: +65 96567964 (Kelvin) / +65 96164776 (Ah An)
Website: www.soliddoorconstruction.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/soliddoorconstruction

Update 03 February 2020

After using the doors for over two years, I’m happy to report that they are still in great condition. The doors still work perfectly and are not damaged in any way at all. The white paint still looks great without any cracks or peels. However, the paint did turn very slightly yellow, but it is not really noticeable.

We were warned by some people not to use wooden doors for our toilets, as they might grow mould or fungi due to the humidity. However, both our toilet doors do not have any mould growth at all. On the other hand, some of our neighbours who use HDB-installed toilet doors actually complained about fungi growth.

This article is part of our completely free and super informative Singapore Home Renovation Guide. Why spend weeks researching when all your renovation information is simply a click away?