March 2022 Class - Fake Paneled Doors in Waukesha

I have not gone out to do a formal class this month, but I feel that I have been learning quite a bit while helping my son with a few projects around his house. Specifically, he wanted to spruce up the 10 interior, flat, hollow doors that he had.

My daughter saw online of a great way to spruce up the doors by adding moulding, to give them a bit more flair, without the cost of a paneled door. We figured that we would give it a try with little cost, and if it didn’t work out, my son could fork over the $$ for the paneled doors.

We started with the plain flat hollow doors and put on a coat of primer. Then, using half-round moulding, we cut the moulding into pieces to create two frames that we placed on the doors. We used liquid nails to glue the pieces down and taped them down overnight.

Once the glue was dry, we did the same thing to the other side of the doors, then off to painting!

We set them up in a makeshift spray booth in the basement and set off using a thin coat of spray each time – if we used too much, the paint would run and cause tons of drips, so we quickly learned that more coats might take more time, but it would be MUCH less annoying!

After a few coats, we also learned that the seam between the moulding and the door was going to need some caulking to make it look good. We added caulk to the edges, and after the final coat of paint, the doors look great! We even spray painted the old brass colored hinges to black for a new look.

Things I learned:

1. When using a spray gun for painting, put on light coats and put up with many multiple coats – it is much less annoying than having runs.

2. The caulking probably should have been done from the start, rather than after we had already started painting.

3. We created a template for the placement of the moulding, so that all the doors ended up the same. Since we had 10 doors, and we put moulding on both sides of most of them, this extra step was very helpful.