Door of Opportunity

CHARACTER. Thankfully if your house doesn’t have it, you can add it.

Since we weren’t lucky enough to buy an older home that has tons of character, we are adding it as we go.  One of the ways we are doing that is by changing out all the doors. When we bought the house, all the interior doors were standard hollow core, six-panel style with brass handles as seen in the photo the right. 

They were all framed out in oak, which I swear is in every home I go into! What is it with oak? Over the 17 years I was gone from NE Ohio, it seems like there was a sale on oak. It is everywhere!

Needless to say, our new doors are not oak – they are a paint grade from Jeld-Wen. We get them from Home Depot. They are the Santa Fe style doors {photo left} which pick up the arch motif that I have in the kitchen. They have a V-groove design top and bottom and are solid, not the hollow core. 

At about $100 each, they are a fairly low-cost way to add a distinctive touch to your home. I order them with the oil-rubbed bronze hinges – goodbye brass!

When we bought the house two years ago, I knew I wanted to change out all the doors. One day, we wandered into Lowes and don’t you know the exact oil-rubbed bronze door knobs we wanted for the new doors were on clearance! Here the manufacturer was changing out packaging.

My DH and I stood there for an hour figuring out how many we would need. Sets that would have cost us $30/each were just $3.47! The front door set that had been $187 was just $40.  Those boxes sit in our garage and every time we get a new door, we pull one from our inventory.

As we replace each door we also update the trim {I order the doors prehung without trim}.  In century homes {100 years plus}, I notice that the trim is very simple, just a  1×4 or 1×6 edged with scribe molding  {a lightweight trim used to cover the seam where two surfaces meet on the same plane}.

So all of our new doors are trimmed out very simply with this centrury’s old style. I love the instant character it gives them! I especially like that this is not just fresh from one of the big box stores. It’s not what you see in everyone’s house.

Love it that a door can be a window of opportunity for transforming our homes!

About Diana

I’m a busy working designer & home stager who gets a lot of joy & happiness helping clients transform their houses into homes they love. I blog as part of that creative process. In our “spare” time my hubby & I are updating our Cottage in the Woods that we share with our cats. I’m a Christian & look forward to someday working for my Heavenly Father, the Greatest Designer of all, decorating mansions in Heaven!

Tagged as: door of opportunity, Jeld-Wen, Santa Fe Style, window of opportunity