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Most of the interior doors in my house are these plywood hollow-core things, pretty cheap-looking. Today I saw that two of my closet doors are starting to come apart, as in the photo below:

enter image description here

Is it worth gluing it back down (maybe with some brad nails as well), or does that separation mean that the door is about to fall apart completely and I just need to replace it?

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    Are the mating surfaces clean enough for wood glue? Wood glue requires wood to wood contact to work. If there is existing wood glue on either surface then the new wood glue will fail. So you would need to either scrape off any interference or use something like epoxy. I would definitely get a few (1 per foot) good clamps to mate the two sections while your adhesive cures. I wouldn't use brad nails at this point unless you do not care about aesthetics. Not to say that brad nails won't work but unless you have a pneumatic brad nailer it will look really awful if using a hammer.
    – MonkeyZeus
    Jul 16, 2021 at 13:13
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    Looks more like the glue failed than wood failure. If possible finish peeling the skin and clean both surfaces and re glue.
    – crip659
    Jul 16, 2021 at 13:19
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    FYI, 95% of doors in the U.S. are of exactly that type. I'm not sure why yours cracked--possibly due to an extreme temperature or humidity swing, possibly due to a manufacturing flaw. I agree with Ed, though... they look perfectly repairable. You could even use trim nails to help keep it together.
    – isherwood
    Jul 16, 2021 at 13:20
  • @MonkeyZeus - why get 'a few' good clamps, when a piece of scrap wood (maybe 2x2) between two good clamps will do the same job?
    – Tim
    Jul 17, 2021 at 8:01
  • @Tim Your expectation of non-twisted and non-bowed scrap wood is considerably more optimistic than mine.
    – MonkeyZeus
    Jul 17, 2021 at 10:51

1 Answer 1

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From what we can see the door is salvageable.

I have reskinned doors many times, I have always used white wood glue and clamps.

When I clamp a skin I use quite a few clamps or several with a board to distribute the pressure.

I would look into what caused them to delaminate there may be an underlying issue that will need to be fixed or it will happen again.

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    +1 Since OP proposed brad nails, worth adding that nails are not needed at all - wood glue is very strong and just clamps will fix it with no need for fasteners as long as there's raw wood on both surfaces for the glue to stick to.
    – J...
    Jul 16, 2021 at 21:54

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