weekend update: modernizing interior doors with paint & moulding.

The summer before Rowan was born, J.J. and his dad spent a few weeks in the backyard staining and installing a bunch of secondhand fence pieces we'd bought from friends. It drove me bananas not to be able to help with this process, considering (a) I love doing home improvements, and (b) I'm the ultimate control freak, but I wasn't allowed anywhere near the fence stain in my delicate (lol) condition.

So I had to unleash my control-freakiness somewhere else, and our upstairs doors took the hit.

We have four doors upstairs: three bedrooms and one bathroom. They were all scratched, grimy, and stained from decades of use...and hollow, which means they don't do much for noise reduction. Wanting a more modern design and color, I shopped around to see if I could find new, solid-core interior doors. Well, I could - at around $100 a pop. Not only was the cost off-putting, but I was intimidated by the prospect of finding the perfect fit, especially in an older house.

It looked like solid-core doors were out of the question, but I wanted to at least brighten up the hallway and make our existing doors more attractive. I took matters into my own hands and gave the doors the same treatment that our kitchen cupboards and master closet doors got - the über-simple paint-plus-moulding trick. I've done this enough times by now that it's a relatively quick and painless project!

:: Step 1: Remove door; remove hardware

I started out by removing the doors (I labeled them to make sure they were re-installed in the right spot) and bringing them to my makeshift workspace in the garage. (My third-trimestery-ness meant that J.J. had to help with the door transportation, even though they're not heavy at all.) I unscrewed the hinges, doorknobs, and door stops from each one. I planned on replacing the old brass hardware, so I tossed those, but I put the doorknobs and screws in plastic baggies to prevent anything from getting lost.

:: Step 2: Prep doors for paint

J.J. had to help with the first step of prepping for paint: using a liquid sander-deglosser. It's easy and quick - you just pour a little on the door and wipe it off with a paper towel, which removes all the grime and build-up - but I didn't feel comfortable exposing mah fetus to the fumes. Once the doors had fully dried (I think I waited a half hour), I primed each one with primer (I used Zinsser Bulls-Eye water-based primer in white) and a foam roller.

:: Step 3: Prepare moulding

I wanted to add a simple design to each door using half-round moulding. I purchased a bunch of eight-foot, pre-primed pieces, which I prepped while the primer was drying. Prep included measuring and cutting, a quick sanding with high-grit sandpaper (to smooth out the cut edges and also help the flat edge get a better grip when I glued it to the door), and a coat of the same white paint I was using for the doors (off-the-shelf Behr Premium Plus in white semi-gloss). 

As for measuring and cutting - I just eyeballed where I wanted the rectangular design to be, measured the lengths (measure twice three times, cut once less often), and used an ancient hand saw and miter box to make 45-degree cuts. I almost always mess up these cuts a few times, usually by cutting the same angle on opposite ends of the same length of moulding - so instead of looking like this: /__\ , it ends up looking like this: /__/ . (I'm so technical, I KNOW.) Still, it didn't take too long to have all the lengths I needed...which was a lot: two short and two long pieces per side, per door. That's thirty-two pieces altogether. My sawing arm was pretty sore.

:: Step 4: Apply first coat of paint to doors

Here's where you could theoretically start varying up some steps of my oh-so-technical process. I wavered on when to attach the moulding - before or after painting? I'd learned from doing the kitchen cabinet doors that painting around the moulding is way more time-consuming than just rolling over a plain door, but that I have to do at least one coat of paint after attaching the moulding to cover up wayward glue and caulked touch-ups (we'll get to that in a minute). So I split the difference and did one coat of paint before I added the moulding and one coat of paint after. Oh, and I went with semi-gloss paint, as I mentioned before, after Googling around to see what finish people usually use on interior doors.

:: Step 5: Attach the moulding

Before attaching anything, I used a pencil on each freshly-painted door to mark where the corners and edges of my moulding design would go. Then I got down to business securing each piece in its new home. Because half-round moulding tends to warp in places, I've found it best to attach it to doors using both wood glue and some tiny finishing nails (maybe two per short piece and three per long piece). I haven't had a piece pop off yet, so it must be an effective technique! Oh, and I always drive the finishing nails in using an inexpensive nail punch set (like this one) to avoid hammer dings on the soft moulding pieces.

:: Step 6: Touch up the moulding

I let the moulding pieces dry and cure overnight, although you definitely don't have to wait overnight. I just needed a break...and it was getting dark out. The next morning, I used some paintable caulk to fill in the tiny divots where the finishing nails went in, as well as any gaps in the moulding. It's typical to end up with gaps where the corners meet, and I always end up using some caulk to fill in gaps between the flat edge and the door (again, moulding doesn't tend to be perfectly straight or flat, so you have to compensate). Easy to do, and it makes the finished product look more professional.

:: Step 7: Final coat of paint

Once the caulk dried, I did one more coat of paint, taking care not to leave roller marks. I also had to use a brush in some places to smooth out paint around the moulding design.

:: Step 8: Attach new hardware; reattach doors

I picked out new hinges and door stops in brushed nickel to match our doorknobs. Surprisingly, the new hardware made a pretty huge impact on the doors. They just looked so much better than the brassy, greasy, paint-splattered, scuffed, and (in the case of the door stops) bent-beyond-recognition hardware pieces from before. 

Once the hinges and door stops were screwed in, J.J. helped me hang the doors back on their frames...and we were done!

(master bedroom on left - guest room in center - nursery on right)

(nursery door - then closet door, which had already been painted - then bathroom door)

It was great having doors that weren't so plain (or dirty), but the best part was how much the white paint brightened up the whole hallway - and each bedroom. Here's the master bedroom and nursery with the orange-y wood doors, and then with the white paint:

It only took a weekend to give these doors new life, not to mention brighten up our upstairs hallway and bedrooms! Someday I'll get my act together and tackle the interior doors in our kitchen - the bathroom, garage, and basement doors. I get Mr. Burns fingers just thinking about how awesome they would look with fresh white paint...yesssssss...

indulge yourself, part I.

So most of my time, energy, and money have been relegated to the kitchen lately. We've made a couple upgrades in other areas of the house, though, and they have totally reinforced my new understanding that it's really helpful to indulge yourself from time to time. --And yes, the kitchen itself is a major indulgence, but what about the everyday things you use that just aren't up to par?

Such as...remember this picture?

That's my bed.

I mentioned that our anniversary present to each other this year was a new mattress. The one we'd been sleeping on was 10+ years old, broken, and - well, it pretty much felt like this:

That's my butt.

...Which is to say, hard and unforgiving. Seriously, we both woke up sore every morning (now, now), and I couldn't find a position that was comfortable for longer than about eight minutes. That doesn't make for a very restful night.

So we threw financial caution to the wind and purchased a Sleep Number mattress, for reasons I first mentioned here:

1. J.J. is a really, really, REALLY picky sleeper. He's been known to rotate among all our sleeping surfaces (bed, futon, couch) in one night in order to find his desired firmness. (That's what she said?)
2. He likes it hard, I like it soft. (THAT'S what she said.)
3. Our mattress needs may fluctuate when I'm pregnant someday/when we have kids.
4. They have a 20-year warranty, and we've heard good reviews from some friends.

They said it would take about two weeks for delivery, but less than a week after our anniversary-day purchase, they called and announced they'd be arriving the next day. Which gave us about an hour of daylight to prep the bed frame. This mattress didn't require a box spring, so we saved a little (emphasis on little) cash by not ordering one. It did require, though, that the slats of the supporting frame be only about an inch apart.

J.J. and I had looked at each other in the store when the salesman said that.

"That's about what our bed frame is, right?" I said, nodding my head to convince both of us.

"Yeah, I think so," he concurred, nodding his head to make it magically so.

"If not," the salesman continued, "just slap a piece of plywood down on top. No big deal."

Well...

Yeah. They're about two to three inches apart. Luckily for me and my sanity, J.J. took this project on and dashed to the hardware store for plywood and duct tape.

The plywood pieces were (shocker) not the right size for the bed frame, so we measured it out, and J.J. used some saw or another to slice them into shape.

Once they were cut and sanded, all we had to do was tape them together.

It may not look super fancy, but it gets the job done, and for a hell of a lot cheaper than a box spring. OR maybe it's our steampunk bed.

And the next day?

Ooooh, pretty. (Excuse the weird lighting. Maybe it's mood lighting.)

BUT.

The jury's still out on whether I'm 100% a fan or not. On the plus side, I never realized how hard our old broken mattress was; I use one of the softest settings on this bed. Unfortunately, I still wake up sore most mornings, and I have to position myself very specifically when falling asleep if I want to have any muscle function the next day. Plus side? I can sleep on my left arm again, for the first time since my stupid mysterious shoulder stupidity started almost two years ago. Unfortunately? I hate the expensive pillows we got, and I didn't return mine in time to get a refund. Plus side? It's fun to make the bed harder and softer. Unfortunately? It's really loud when it's inflating or deflating, so I don't recommend changing the setting if your partner is already asleep.

So, I'm somewhat undecided, but overall, the upgrade was worth it. For his part, J.J. loves it, but he says that about everything that he's too lazy to return - slash, everything that he's sick of me talking about for hours on end ("THE BLUE KITCHEN IS FINE. IT'S FINE.") True, part of me wishes we had just spent the money on a regular mattress. Part of me thinks we should invest in a quality pillow-top mattress cover, which might help with some of the unevenness (which becomes apparent during...um...non-sleep activities). Part of me wonders if there was a 90-day return policy that we should take advantage of, although if so, it may have expired...earlier this week. Part of me is back in the same rut that led us to years of mattress-hating inaction: ignoring the problem except when it's unavoidable - i.e., going to sleep, waking up. But most of me? Is much more well-rested and happier in bed. Indulgence: it's a good thing.

The bedroom isn't the only place we've indulged lately, though. More on that soon! The mystery is killing you, I know. Hint: It's bathroom-related. I know you want to know all the intimate details of our sleeping and bathing routines, so...your wish shall be granted. YOU'RE WELCOME.

maximize yourself.

Well...maximize my closet space, anyway.

"Wasted organizational real estate" is kind of a running theme in this house. It was built in the mid-1960s, and like other houses of that era, it's lacking in built-in storage areas - no pantry, two tiny hall closets, and bedroom closets that did NOT make the best of the space available:

We could make our clothes and shoes fit into this space, but it wasn't awesome. There was one horizontal bar with a shelf laid on top, and that was it. The thing is, it's actually a deep closet - almost three feet, if I remember correctly. Because I'm a masochist when it comes to Getting Myself In Over My Head on DIY House Projects, I trolled the interwebs for some inspiration photos. This was pre-Pinterest-obsession (circa September 2011, aka one month B.P.: Before Pinterest), so I just Google-image-searched (how juvenile! Oh Pinterest, how you've jaded me) until I found some good stuff.

All the closet systems I found for purchase were mega expensive. I was kind of hoping to do this whole project for under $100, but closet systems? Tend to be wayyyy more than $100. I considered buying plywood planks at a big box store and completely DIY-ing it, but then I found this affordable closet system on Amazon. It was right around $100 for the shelving tower and three hanging rods.

I wanted the system to look built-in, which meant I had to paint it white to match the interior of the closet. Speaking of which...prepping the closet interior turned into an extra week of the project, ugh. I know I'm supposed to plan for things to cost more and take longer than expected, but it still gets my goat.

Why did it take so long? Well, it was my first time doing any sort of major removal of original-to-the-house shelving, so I didn't anticipate...um...ripping up half the wall while taking out the closet shelf. First, I had re-located our clothes, shoes, and crap to the purple room closet, which was, at that point, mostly empty. Then I spent a good half hour trying to figure out how to dismantle the existing rod and shelf. The metal hook-rod piece had been screwed, glued, and painted to the shelf, and I whacked it (heh) with a hammer for a while. I was still only 80% certain that I was capable of improving the closet at all, so the lack of confidence probably contributed to how long it took to get that thing down. Once it was, though, I tackled the shelf (also screwed, nailed, glued, and painted over). And that's how my closet went from this:

To this:

It was...not looking so hot.

"Look, J.J., I updated our closet!"

The strip of exposed drywall (or whatever the eff that is...as if I know) ran the entire length of the closet and ranged from a half inch to about five inches high (and about a quarter-inch deep) in some places.

So fancy.

I had anticipated having to fix some nail holes, so I had wood filler on hand, but this...required more than just wood filler. I thought. I didn't really know. Still don't really know, but either way, I ventured into the basement to see what my options were. Wood filler, caulk, joint compound: I went for the joint compound. I smeared it all the way around the gouges and pressed the tape stuff into (how's that for a detailed, professional description?). I sanded it down after it dried and repeated the process...just in case. I mean, structurally, everything was still fine, but aesthetically? Hot mess.

And, of course, this fun process meant that I was going to have to re-paint the closet. We didn't have a can of the original color (because we didn't paint it), and the interior was so dingy and scuffed up that it needed a new coat anyway. I bought some off-the-shelf white paint (after lingering over some light blues) and slapped two coats up. FYI, painting a new white coat over an old white coat is confusing. Picture me, staring at an expanse of wall, murmuring, "Shit, did I already do this part?" (Kim Jong-Cathy: Looking at wall.)

In the meantime, I was also painting and assembling the new closet tower in my ever-professional workshop. I don't know what faux-wood chemical compound the tower components were made of, but painting them was a total bitch. I sanded them down first, applied a coat of primer...and watched it seemingly disappear before my eyes. Like, little holes dotted the primer job. Second coat...samesies. Being the brilliant impatient DIY-er that I am, I forged ahead anyway. And ended up doing seventy hundred jillion coats of paint.

Coat #45,377.

Once the paint was (mostly) behaving, I assembled the two halves of the tower...

...and set them up in the also-freshly-painted closet:

You probably can't tell, but there's a level on the
third shelf up, and it indicated PERFECTION.

I tried sawing slots into the base molding so I could slide the tower in flush against the wall, but that was far beyond my capabilities. Instead, I borrowed J.J. for a minute (he was busy building our new backyard shed with his dad). He leaned the whole thing against the wall while I slid some wood shims (which I WAS capable of sawing - in half, so they didn't jut out) under the front part of the tower's base planks. Somehow, it all stayed level, and I fastened the entire contraption to the wall with pieces from the kit.

Apparently, I grew tired of playing Mediocre Project Photographer sometime around this point, so I have no in-progress pics of the rod installation. Suffice it to say that my do-it-yourself patience had dimmed considerably after about a week of unforeseen patching and painting complications, and, long story short, I installed the three rods. J.J.'s mom had a hanging rod attachment that she gifted to us, which hung at the perfect height and increased our hanging capacity. I also added some hooks to the side walls.

End result?

Don't worry, Internet police, we've since
moved that safe to a...safer location.

My side of the closet, with a view
of the jewelry hooks on the wall.

J.J.'s side, with the belt hooks I added to that wall.

It seriously feels like a walk-in closet now - wayyy bigger than it used to. And our storage space was, like, quadrupled. I wish I had hung the lower-left rod a couple inches higher to accommodate the laundry basket, but it's so not a big enough problem to necessitate re-hanging it. I also want to add more shelves to the tower, but the pre-cut shelves I found aren't quite the right size (too shallow), so that's still in the works (four months later). Overall, though, it was a serious upgrade. And I found a garbage bag's worth of clothes to donate, which you know made my minimalist heart happy.

Next on the list was tackling the Bad-Kid Cupboard...but that's another post for another day!

What's in the boooooox? Hint: not bad kids.  (Yet.)

light yourself up.

The master bedroom has undergone a massive overhaul in our two and a half years here...

Move-in day...original curtains, original wall color, original
furniture configuration, original box springs on the floor.

Circa about a year ago...Meijer mass-produced art, awesome but broken thrift-
store lamp, college mirror, gold dresser hardware. Oh! And new blue walls.

Also about a year ago...honey-colored oak cupboard doors, broken
nightstand, but finally a bed frame! And clean socks on the bed.

Compare those to these more recent pictures, which feature a few new purchases - lamps, bedside tables, curtains, and a new mirror. Actually, you might not even notice all the little changes we've made, so I'll try to point them out. God, I'm so helpful.

Still waiting to paint that honey door, but there's a new furniture configuration, at least,
along with a new brushed-nickel doorknob. Not that you can tell from this picture.

New mirror (actually hanging on the wall!), repurposed lamp with non-ripped
lampshade, framed fabric because Pinterest or something? (those need to GO), 
and spray-painted dresser hardware, all located where the bed was.

Cupboard and closet doors that I painted and added moulding/new hardware
to - and the insides are all fancied up, too. A post for another day. :)

New curtains and curtain rods, winter duvet cover, actual stuff hanging on walls. Which
you will not find anywhere else in my house, due to utter laziness and indecisiveness.

Aaaand the bare, bare wall.

It was that bare, bare wall that was getting to me. We finally had (non-broken!) nightstands on both sides of the bed, and photos on the adjacent wall, but I couldn't figure out what to do with the huge expanse of wall behind the bed. It extends all the way to the door, and it was bland and boring.


I tried out some floating shelves, but I couldn't find any sturdy ones, and I just wasn't loving them. I thought about hanging more art there, but I liked where the wedding photos were situated, and I thought it would be weird (and make the room off-balance) to hang more rectangular art above the bed. Of course, Pinterest is always there to remedy situations like this. And to create new situations that need to be remedied, but whatevs. Finally, finally, I found some fab Pinspiration (yep. I used that word) one day:

Loved it! And the best part was, we have all the materials necessary to do this already...i.e., no money needed to be spent. NO SPENDING MONEY MAKE CHEAP FRUGAL CATHY HEART HAPPY.

We purchased ten krillion strands of white Christmas lights for our wedding (on sale...with a coupon...SNAP), so I gathered up four of those. The previous owners gifted us the sheer white curtains (can you spot their original homes in the purple room?) and the gold ceiling hooks (originally hanging ALL OVER OUR GODDAMN KITCHEN CUPBOARDS FOR MUGS COFFEE CUPS). I had leftover fishing line, also from the wedding, and white spray primer from...what? Oh, yeah, spray painting the dresser hardware. I figured I could get away with just priming the hooks, since the primer is white (to help them blend in with the ceiling), and I didn't have any white spray paint...so the primer would kinda have to do.

So I had all the materials - I had the inspiration picture - aaaand it all fizzled out there. I gathered everything up in late December, while I was on holiday break from work, but it never came together. Luckily, I contracted a freaky stomach virus on Tuesday night that kept me home from work on Wednesday, so I had plenty of time (in between testing out our new addition...glad to say it performed beautifully) to mess around with random Pinterest projects. Well, project, anyway. Projects would be overstating it.

Started out with the breakfast of tummy virus champions...

...and got to work. I don't usually use power tools when I'm home alone - or ever, until very recently, when I built our new master closet shelves - but all I needed to do for this was drill some small starter holes in the ceiling so I could screw in the hooks.

That was easy enough. Next step was stringing the two sheer white curtains from fishing line between two hooks on either side of the bed.

It was really hard to pull the fishing line taut, and I didn't like the curtains drooping so low. It actually doesn't look too bad in that picture, but in real life, I wasn't digging it. I knew I was going to need another hook in the middle to help string the Christmas lights, so I screwed that one in and tried again with the curtains.

Still not loving it, but my friend !Rachel called around this point to regal me with tales of her recently broken femur (shudder), and I kind of forgot about the droopiness issue whilst listening to how she wrapped her leg around a tree - and whilst ironing the curtains, which were super wrinkly, and priming the ceiling hooks. Then I left for my bimonthly MSW supervision, which was fantastic, as usual...minus my spinning head and rumbling innards. Exhausted upon returning home, the project didn't get touched until I got back from work tonight.


Sometimes, though, you need to let a project marinate in order to work out all the kinks. Before today, I had no idea how I was going to make the droopy curtains resemble my Pinspiration pic in any way, but I stopped thinking (for once, and probably just due to extreme virus-induced calorie deficiency) and got working. ...Also, my new faucet for the downstairs bathroom arrived today, and the directions were beyond intimidating. Tackling this project made me feel productive, even though I was only, in reality, procrastinating. Anyway, in a matter of five minutes, I pre-tied knots in the fishing line and angled the ceiling hook so I could loop it on without having to pull the line taut, which worked like a dream. Then I hooked the Christmas lights on, and - voila!

Loving it! Somewhere I have an extension cord with a switch on it so we could, theoretically, turn the lights on and off without having to get out of bed. The outlet is by the floor on the wall-side of the bed, which is CLEARLY much too far to manage. In the meantime, though, this - what do I even call this? This configuration? This contraption? Whatever it is, it provides enough light to read by, and Christmas lights just make me happy. And J.J. has deemed it "decidedly non-dormy," despite his initial fears that he would start having freshman-year flashbacks if we were to hang Christmas lights anywhere except on a Christmas tree. Bam! Success.