After we finished painting the windows in Sydney’s room, we wanted to improve the basic slab doors. Again, rather than buying expensive new doors we thought we could DIY a solution. Just like painting the windows, adding molding, was an easy and inexpensive fix that paid big dividends.
Before Molding
All of the doors in our house are original, slab doors. Before this project, they all had mismatching hardware too: nickel, gold, oil rubbed bronze. It looked terrible. Below are the two doors in Sydney’s room: the entrance door and the closet door.
The Project
After browsing Pinterest we figured all the slab doors needed was a little molding (and new hardware and paint) to give them new life. We bought this molding from Home Depot to adhere to the doors.
First, we measured and leveled the molding’s placement on the doors (Ellie wanted to help too!). We placed the top 4.5″ from the sides of the door, and 7″ from the bottom. The molding does look a little better with the bottom piece higher, that’s why the measurements aren’t perfectly centered. Those lines were what we used to measure the length of each piece of molding (the entrance door is wider than the closet door, so their measurements wouldn’t be the same).
Once we had the measurements on each door, we cut each of the pieces of molding. The doors weren’t exactly the same width, so our measurements for both weren’t equal.
The cutting and measuring was the “hardest” part. Once that was done we used Liquid Nails to adhere the molding to the doors and left them taped up for 24 hours to ensure they held. Once the glue dried we removed the tape and caulked the edges and cracks.
After Molding
Now that the molding was finished, we upgraded the doors with hardware and paint. First, we painted the entrance door in Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace. Accent doors are sort of becoming a thing for us (I still loved the green door at our last house even if I would tone it down if I were to do it again) and so we painted the closet door Benjamin Moore’s Mighty Aphrodite. We then added these Weslock knobs (both the locking and closet versions) with matching black hinges to all the doors.
And here’s the after, so much better, right? Each door cost less than $100, including the hardware — much less than a brand new door!
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