Remember when we were living with no interior doors? I do. It wasn’t my favorite time. It’s been about a year since HH hung new interior doors. {We were quoted $2,100 to have the interior doors hung but HH read a bunch of tutorials and DIY’d the install himself over a few days saving us a bunch of money.} Our doors are the berkley style, part of the Masonite West End series. We were able to order them for $85/each through the same company we dealt with for our baseboards. You can read more about why we chose the doors here. We’ve been living with them for a year now and LOVE them.
Yesterday, a rare day when all three kids were out of the house, I decided it was the perfect time to finally paint those doors. Uh, yeah, in my world it takes me a year to get around to painting doors. In total, there are seven of these interior doors {2 linen closets, 2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms} but I painted the door to our only functioning bathroom right before the The Tile Shop photo shoot and the other bathroom door isn’t hung yet to allow unobstructed access to the room whenever we get around to tackling that back-burnered project. So of the seven doors, I painted five yesterday. And it took me forever. Like, all day. But it was actually pretty relaxing and therapeutic. Maybe that’s because the kids were missing? And I had NPR streaming on the laptop.
I used paint leftover from painting the fireplace. It’s Benjamin Moore white dove mixed in Clark + Kensington primer + paint, semi-gloss.
I painted the doors on their hinges. I used a 1 ½” angled brush to paint the inset detailing & outer edges and to cut in around the hinges and doorknobs. I used a 6″ foam roller on the rest for a nice smooth finish. Each door required two coats of the primer + paint.
The photos don’t do my paint job justice. The pre-primed doors had a flat finish and there were grimy black fingerprints and dirty smudges all over them. The doors look so fresh now and should be easy to wipe down from here on out.
FYI – It’s really gloomy here today so artificial lighting was a must in these after shots.
The subtle inset detailing on the doors is perfect for our small, door-ridden hallway. We feared that any door with more prominent detailing might make our teeny hall feel busy and not mesh with our home’s midcentury roots. Everyone that comes over comments on the doors. They’re simple and modern, a design you don’t see everyday.
We went with matte black hinges and doorknobs for a little contrast. I’m so glad we did! They are little surprises against all the white.
I’ve always been a sucker for room-to-room shots and the newly painted doors have only strengthened my weakness. Does that even make sense?
I’m also giddy about experimenting with door-not-all-the-way-open shots. Yes, these are the things I find exciting.
Also, this post could have been titled “The One Where Mabrey Does a Fair Share of Photobombing.”
I thought this trio of pictures might help illustrate some not-so-interesting points.
1 – Looking down the hall from the great room. The door at the end is a linen closet. A second linen closet, the unfinished kid/guest bathroom, the utility closet and the master bedroom are on the left – in that order. Mabrey’s room and the boys’ shared bedroom are on the right – in that order. There is a lone book on the floor at the end of the hall courtesy of Mabrey. It’s an original copy of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
2 – Turning to the left and looking into the hall from the great room. There’s a very short hall to the kid/guest bath. The door you see is the second linen closet. Down the hall, you can see the louvered doors to the utility closet.
3 – Looking out into the hall from Mabrey’s room. HH found the louvered doors on the side of the road on his way home from having custom louvered doors priced out at several home improvement stores. He was returning home empty-handed {the estimates were, quote, “ridiculous”}, brainstorming less expensive options for the utility closet when he spotted these on the side of the road in our neighborhood. Most of the houses in our ‘hood are similar to ours so HH figured the size was close enough and the price certainly was right. He only had to cut them down a little to install them onto the new track. The louvers allow air to circulate {a necessity when heat-emitting machines are behind ’em} but keep the ugly mechanics out of sight. I haven’t painted these doors yet. They’re next on my list.
This is the master bathroom door I painted months ago. Now the rest of the doors match.
And one more half-open door shot because you couldn’t possibly be bored with these yet.
images: Dana Miller for House*Tweaking
budget decor, DIY, renovation