Fortify master bedroom door?

[workinwifdakids]

I need y'all's wisdom here. I'm securing our new home in layers, and now I'm at an impasse. The master bedroom has a standard hollow door, which opens inward. This is a problem. I want to harden the entrance to the master bedroom.

I *think* I want to get a solid door that opens outward as opposed to what it does now, and install a long-throw bolt that's only visible from the inside (along with, of course, the standard flimsy interior latch type door. It needs to match the rest of the doors. This isn't a safe room - I just want to force an intruder to give me maybe 60 seconds to grab my shotgun.

Yes, alarms, dogs, exterior exits... those are all being considered. But right now, is that bedroom door as described what I want? If not, what? How much am I looking to spend?

[Yogimus]

Is the door frame considerable enough for it to matter?

[BDK]

They make decent looking metal doors and frames.

[PawPaw]

One of Murphy's Laws of Combat says that when you make it hard for an attacker to get it, you make it hard for you to get out.

What's in the hallway? Could an attacker push a piece of furniture against that door or brace against an adjacent wall, so that you couldn't open the door by swinging it outward? While you're trapped in your bedroom what is he doing to the other people in the house? Or, in the possibility of a weather event, such as a tornado, could you become trapped inn your bedroom? Common building practice for residential construction is to have a door open in to a room, for lots of good reasons. Normal commercial building practice is to have a door open out, for other good considerations.

[Greg]

Ergonomics of inward opening doors inside homes are much better. If you intend to actually *live* there you'd probably be happier with inward opening doors.

A simple grippy rubberized doorstop might be all you need.

[skb12172]

To add to what Paw Paw said, you probably don't want the hinges on the outside with the Goblin, either.

[Aesop]

I third the observation that putting the hinges on the outside isn't your first choice. A sturdy flat-blade screwdriver and a couple-three shoves, and the hinges might as well not exist.

Swapping a solid exterior-grade door for the hollow core one, beefing it up with brass or steel plates over the lock works, and adding a deadbolt and large (3"-6" throw) L-shapped cane bolts inside top and bottom (and throwing upwards and downwards) on the lock side will get you the most bang for the buck, provided you throw those bolts nightly without fail.
(Murphy sez the night you don't is the night things go sideways.)

If you want more than that, pulling the whole frame, and dropping in a pre-hung, exterior-grade metal-clad 1-hour fire door, with the same hardware additions, and if necessary, a solid bar across the interior braced with a 2x6 or 4x4 in wall-frame mounted brackets would stop most anything short of a SWAT team with breaching charges for at least long enough to arm yourself to repel boarders.

And if you opt for the lesser upgrade, change out the near certainly shallow-sunk hinge screws for some woodscrews long enough to hit interior framing, probably 3 1/2 to 4" long or more (YMMV), on both the hinges and the strike plate(s) for locks and bolts, or it's coming down with one or two good kicks. Go with deeper screws on the door side of the hinges as well, for the same reason.

If you epoxy a couple of pieces of solid bar stock, 1/2 dia. or more by 6+" long, and sticking out 3/4"-1" from the wall frame into the door body when it's closed, into holes through the hinge-side frame, and rout or mortise out matching catch holes on the hinge-side door body, (and reinforce the door frame holes with brass or steel reinforcement - plates, or hole-mounted and purpose cut tubing), and put the two between where the usual three hinges are, that door ain't coming down with less than some serious work, even if someone shoots out the lockset and door hinges. The door itself will probably have to fail first. (A quick and dirty way to do this is to just get long and heavy lag screws, screw them through the door frame and into the wall frame, leaving the heads sticking out, and then saw off the hex heads leaving just the body you want protruding. Then chisel out the matching holes in the door carcass so it closes normally. Either way, do it right the first time, because getting the bar or bolt out afterwards is a long process involving a lot of tools, sweat, and profanity.)

Anything more than that would be a remodel requiring masonry, steel plates and/or armorcore panels to make it an actual safe-room. And cost thousands.
Bear in mind that if you make the door not a door, they may go around or over, and the new weak point is your interior walls: they're likely only two sheets of sheetrock over 2x4s and air, which a crowbar breaches in about two hits. Bullets and buckshot, even faster, but that's a two-way street.

Or the ceiling, which is 2x4s or 2x6s and a single sheet of sheetrock ceiling. So do you have an overhead crawlspace, where's the access, and how well is that secured? Because if they lightly try your door handle, and it's locked, it would really suck for your warning to be someone dropping dynamically through your ceiling into the inside while you were still soundly asleep, or going up one unsecured crawlspace hole and exiting one in a bedroom closet, and you waking up to them standing over you.

[workinwifdakids]

So, let's say I leave the door as is, drop 3" screws into the hinges, and a reinforced strike plate into the frame with 3" screws and leave everything else as is. Without a dead bolt, just the standard latch, am I really doing anything?

[Aesop]

Assuming 3" gets into actual wall frame, yes. (I'd go 3 1/2"-4")

Do the same to a replacement solid-core door, and you're doing a lot more, for maybe an add'l $100 or so at Loew's or Homeless Depot.
Throw in another $20 or so to get the wrap-around brass or steel lockworks reinforcement, and you can paint the whole thing to match the interior, and you'll be the only one who knows you did anything.
Until someone tries to force the door.

And at that level of unobtrusive, a sturdy interior doorknob-to-floor brace or floor door wedge wouldn't go amiss, again with minimal investment or muss 'n fuss.

None of that will buy you 60 seconds, but it should require 3-4 kicks from a linebacker-sized individual.
A large can of OC bear spray wouldn't hurt either.

[MarkD]

Ummmm.....

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems of the invader got to touching distance of your bedroom door without alerting you, you've got a more serious problem than how tough your bedroom door IS.

It means he got onto your property without getting scared off (motion sensor lights are a good thing).

Then got thru your house perimeter (via door or window) without making enough noise to wake you.

Then disabled your dog (if any, YMMV on that one).

Sure, I can understand making the bedroom door as hard to breach as possible, but can't figure how anyone would get that far without you standing right behind it, armed and ready.