Super Easy Fixer Upper DIY Paneled Door

This is not a sponsored post.

Today I wanted to share my super easy door DIY.

Well... I don't think DIY is ever as easy as people make it sound. Everything always seems to take three times longer than I thought it would & never goes according to plan. Don't let people lie to you.

I just kind of started accepting that and allowing two days for what I think should take a half day. It's much less frustrating that way.

This weekend I chose to work on my half bath door that my little shelter rescue dog had taken her anxiety out on the first day I brought her home. It also had a hole in it that needed to be repaired.

The question is always if it's worth the DIY. Sometimes it's not worth the cost, or time to DIY. A lot of times it's just better to replace an item. Over the years I have learned to count time as money. Our time is valuable. Especially to our families, but I figured I could repair & update this door with roughly $12 in supplies & two days. So off to Lowe's to pick up supplies.

I picked up a sheet of $7.58 MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) and had the attendant rip it into 4" strips. Which they were nice enough to do.

 Instagram story mode.

Most of the other supplies I already had on hand, but here is a list of the tools & supplies you will need for the project.

MDF ripped into 4" strips

Saw

Hole Saw (For the door knob hole)

Measuring Tape

Caulk Gun

Liquid Nails

Wood Filler

Sander

Course & Fine Grit Sandpaper

Paint

Heavy objects to place on your strips while the glue dries

For the first step, remove all the hardware. 

Next fill any cracks & holes with your wood filler. Any wood filler will do. I used Elmer's ProBond.

I did not add filler to the dog chews since I was adding molding to the bottom.

While the filler is drying, you can lay your MDF strips flush with the edges and mark them for cutting. For the short horizontal strips, I laid them flush with one side and marked the other side with a pencil, then cut them with my miter saw.

For the strip going over the knob hole you'll need to use your hole saw. For this step I turned my door on it's side, laid my strip flush with it. Then I traced the hole from the other side & voila! You've got a perfectly placed circle to use your hole saw on. 

Trace the hole from the other side by turning the door on it's side. 

The Hole Saw attaches to my drill just like a bit. 

Once all your pieces are cut, use your fine grit sand paper to sand the edges of the MDF to remove frays before gluing.

Once you're done with that, start framing our your door. Use your caulk gun to apply liquid nails to the back of your strips and glue them flush with the edges of your door.

For the middle strips, I measured 15 1/2" from edge to edge.

Repeat this step for the bottom of your door.

Here my top and bottom middle strips have been measured, placed and glued and now I am measuring to find the center between the two middle pieces so that I can place my last strip.

For the last strip I measured edge to edge of the center strips above and below. I found the center between those two pieces and glued the last strip into place. I put heavy objects on the strips to ensure they would dry nice and flat.


I used wood putty to fill the seams, but I think caulk or spackling would have worked better. The putty came out rough. Even with sanding it stood out and took many coats of paint to get it to blend in with the rest of the door.

 I will use caulk or spackling next time.

Once your glue and putty are dry, use your fine grit sand paper to go over the door & strips. This prepares the door for painting and removes any glue that didn't wipe off.


Now it's time for painting.

Initially I tried using spray paint that I already had on hand.

Remember when I said things never go according to plan? That would go for the budget as well.

I was emptying cans of spray paint much faster than I hoped so I took a sample of the paint color (Rustoleum's Dark Walnut in satin) to Lowe's and had them match in an Olympic satin. I would highly recommend either rolling this on with a cabinet roller, or using a paint sprayer. I was out of cabinet rollers and didn't want to buy more so I used my paint sprayer to apply the paint. This did drive up the cost of my project, however for twenty five bucks I got a gallon of Olympic paint with a $10 rebate. Now I have plenty paint for future door projects as I probably didn't even use a pint in my sprayer. And for fifteen bucks, I didn't think that was a bad deal at all.

I love my sprayer because it's so easy to used & clean. You only need to give your project a light sanding with fine or extra fine grit sandpaper when you're done adding coats, for a smooth professional looking finish.

The great thing about the sprayer is that dry time is much faster. Don't ask me why this is. Maybe because you thin the paint before spraying it on? I have no idea, but coats dry so much faster than spray painting or rolling. I work outside so when the wind comes and blows things on my nice finish, it's usually already dry enough that it doesn't hurt it. Just be sure to spray thin coats and allow a few minutes to dry in between more coats. If you do get something blown onto your wet paint, don't panic. Let it dry, then sand it with a fine grit. If sanding alone doesn't do the trick you can add additional coats of paint.

When using a sprayer, let your paint strokes be long and sweeping across the entire width or length of your project.

When your door is paneled, painted and dry on both sides, it's time to hang! When I hung my door on it's new hinges it wouldn't close. After further investigation, I found it was because I left a lip where there it should have been recessed for the hinges to sit flush with the edge.

It was an easy fix. I just used my orbital sander and course grit paper to sand the lip down.

Now that the paneling is flush with the recessed hinge area, I could hang my door.

Only it still wouldn't close.

After some trouble shooting & realizing that my new hardware was to blame, I took my course grit (extra course would have worked better here) sander and sanded the edge of the door down until I was able to close it with no rubbing. I wound up using my belt sander for this part. It's much faster. I have seen people use a grinder to file a rubbing door down as well.

It was the worst idea ever. This did work but caused quite a dust mess. You definitely want to wear a mask. Clean up was a doosey. I'm talking dust covered ceiling, walls, floors two rooms over. Next time I'll measure how much I need to sand off and take the door back down. Who knows how long I will be digging wood dust out of my eyes, ears and nose.

I did not have to take the door back down to repaint the edge when I was done sanding it down. I just used a rag and wiped the paint onto the raw sanded wood like stain and was happy with the outcome.

And here is the finished project:

Dust and all. Ughhhhh.

It was a day and a half project and I couldn't be happier with the results. It was my first time to add molding to a door so I learned a lot that will save me time on the next door. I'm planning on doing my damaged pantry door next! Nah, just kidding! I'm just buying a new door next time.

Thanks for reading. As always, please feel free to leave a comment here or you can find me on Facebook  & Instrgram. Hope y'all enjoyed this post!

1977 Half Bath Makeover- Farmhouse Style

This is not a sponsored post.

Hello everyone! I have taken a break from mountain bike adventures to bring you a new home project blog post! It was way past due, but honestly, when you're juggling 3 kids, home, fitness & projects that's kinda how it works when you're trying to be balanced. A lot of time between posts and a lot of wine.

Well I'm so excited to have one more project down. We still have a long way to go but we have done so much. Woot!!! We had nearly completed the half bath project a while back, but it was still in need of caulk and trim paint as well as a couple of other things. I bought a new mirror and tried to secure it using Scott heavy duty command strips. That didn't work out so well. It seemed to hold up just fine for about a month before suddenly, in the middle of the night, it came crashing down. Luckily it didn't break the mirror, only the mirror trim, which I was able to fix with super glue and a new paint job. Ughhhh. It had seemed like a great idea initially. I thought I would easily be able to adjust it in case it wasn't level. In my defense, he command strips said they'd hold up to 17 lbs and I used 4 of them.

I wound up using this method to hang the mirror back up after the new paint job. It was super easy & worked out great! Now I have no worries of the previous problem happening again.

So this is what we started with:

The half bath is so tiny that this was all they could manage to put on the house listing. Image via HAR. The door actually can't open all the way because it hits the toilet. You kind of have to squeeze around it.

Let me tell you that pictures can be deceiving. This halfbath doesn't look so bad, right? What you don't see is the cracks around the sink drain. You don't see the gaps of missing caulk or how dirty the walls were. You don't see the lack of window trim, or peeling 1970's floral wallpaper under flesh colored flat paint. Seriously... my kids friends were afraid to use it when they were over. One little girl said it was creepy and was afraid to change her clothes in there.

So the fun begins:

Here is the nice man at Lowes ripping plywood into 12" strips for the planked walls for us. 12" strips is all they would do for us. I had initially wanted 6" strips but they would not allow it. I settled for 12" strips to save us some work. 

 Here you can see how un-even the lines were. Partly due to the cuts being imperfect but also because nothing in this house is even close to square. Cursing didn't help so we used a piece of wood trim to hide this big unsightly gap. We used liquid nails on the the back of the planks and secured them with a nail gun.

 We used tile spacers for the gaps, but there were places we had to wing it because the space was either too tight or too far apart, thanks to a very not square room and un-evenly cut planks. Adds character, right? Yes. Let's go with that.

A part of this bathroom redo you don't see is that we discovered mold in the walls about 1 foot up around the entire bathroom and had to cut it out and replace that sheetrock. Which is how we decided on planked walls. Neither hubby nor I are good at mudding. So we decided to cover up our bad mud job with planked walls. It was a much cheaper option than calling in a professional and much less time consuming than mudding ourselves. 

A little glue for boards on the wall. A little caulking. A little paint & I think it worked out ok.

After:

 We decided on DIY wood counter top & under mount sink to replace the old cracked combo. Find tutorial here. We chose to use polycrylic on our counter top instead of tung oil.

 I won't miss that old white linoleum! We used resilient vinyl wood planks to replace the old linoleum.  It's waterproof, budget friendly and easy to install!

The new faucet was an AMAZING score. I seriously recommend shopping Amazon for you fixture needs. They are WAY less expensive than your local hardware store and you can see customer product reviews before buying. 

We painted the cabinet with Sherwin WIllaims Summer White in semi gloss, and the hardware with Rustoleum auto primer and spray paint in Dark Walnut. 

You'll notice stacked wood for the counter top. This is because  once we took out the old counter top there was no support for our under mount sink. We had to improvise.  Overall, I'm much happier with this look than what I had originally. 

We added  farmhouse window trim to the bare window. This little addition is cheap, easy and makes a HUGE difference! 

How do you like my wine jug on the back of the toilet? For 12 bucks I bought the jug of wine @ Kroger for the holidays and scored a jug of wine AND a vase for cheaper than buying @ Hobby Lobby. I do LOVE Hobby Lobby (in fact, I bought the new mirror there with birthday money my sister sent me) but they don't include wine in their glassware. 

The total cost for this cozy little half bath makeover was $450 for flooring, paint, supplies, trim,  plywood planks, counter top wood, new mirror, new faucet, sink, and decor. Not exactly what I wanted to spend on a half bath makeover, but you live and learn, I guess. 

Overall, I can't say I would spend that again... but we had a lot of work to do and I really am happy with the outcome. Sometimes I read other blogs and what people say the cost for reno is and all I can think is, "HOW?". I read numerous tutorials and blogs on half bath makeovers and the costs were well under what I spent. Maybe it's the area I live in. Who knows. It's done now and I'm really happy with not having a creepy half bath.

Thank you for reading! Until next time I wish everyone happy adventures in project land! Please share any questions, comments or your own half bath projects in the comment section! :)

Ecclectic Gir's Bedroom- using black furniture in a kids room. Cheap, Easy & Fast decorating.

This is not a sponsored post. 

Hello blog world :)

I've missed you! I've been so busy with the family and cycling that I really haven't done much in the way of decorating. However, yesterday I got in my little girl's room to clean up and I added some things she had sitting in her closet. I wanted to share the update with you guys.

Let me tell you, it takes no time for my kids to completely destroy their rooms after everything is put together. Is that just my house? Even though THEY are primarily responsible for keeping their rooms clean. Even though they are so excited and in love after I get in there and get everything reorganized and they are finding things they haven't seen in a year. I don't know how many times I can quote my daughter saying "I am never going to mess this up! My room looks amazing!".

Yeahhhhhh. It always somehow goes back to disaster status a lot faster than I expected. But for now, it's clean and I took pictures so I could remember this moment.

I often struggle so much with wanting to keep things simple that I actually get anxious when I feel like I'm adding too much or start feeling overwhelmed with too much stuff. Sometimes adding a little more can give you a more balanced space. I love command strips for anything I can hang because it gives me the option to hang things without needing to repair the wall if I decide I don't like it.

Obviously I am not a designer. I eyeball everything. Meaning, I look at it and if it looks good and balanced to me then I leave it that way. If it doesn't, I rearrange. I am SO all about using what you have. That can be super frustrating sometimes. Trying to find a way to make pieces work when you have an idea in your head of what WOULD work can be maddening. I know two hutches on either side would be beautiful, but I only have one. Also, I have a lot of black furniture I picked up from a garage sale on the cheap. So I need to find a way to balance the room without the cost and labor of painting. I don't like painting if I don't have to. There are just other things I'd rather be doing. So the following is what I ended up with.

Here are her initial before and afters:

And here is where we ended up:

I added the other side table, giving her more room and adding width to match the hutch on the other side. I've had this little shelf floating around the house with no place to fit in so I used it in here when no one wanted to buy it from me for 20 bucks. I can't decide if I like it at the foot of the bed or not.

Everything you see was either thrifted, garage sale finds or stuff I had in my attic. With the exception of the rugs, a couple of pillows and these cute little things:

I scored them all at Hobby Lobby's 90% off sale! That's right... 90% off! Those little things on the wall cost me $1 ea.! I couldn't believe all the cute stuff they had. I was surprised to see the things no one else wanted. I did! And it would tie in with the black furniture beautifully. 

Overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out considering I used everything I already had and didn't paint anything but the walls. Fast, easy and cheap. It's not the prettiest... but it's the way I like it! 

Hope you enjoyed this post. Feel free to post any comments or questions. I love hearing feedback from everyone. Until next time....

Fireplace Makeover- How I Painted My Fireplace & How it's Held Up

This is not a sponsored post.

Recently I had some questions about how I painted my fireplace that I haven't answered in previous posts. I thought I'd do that today. 

First, here is my fireplace before & after:

Before:

1977 Asymmetrical Fireplace with Bookshelf 

After:

This fireplace was such a source of frustration to me when we first moved in. I didn't know what to do with it without demolition. As you know, this blog is about decorating on the cheap. There is no way I was going to pay for that. I searched Pinterest and eventually found myself on Jenna Sue's blog. There I found my inspiration and got to work!

Painting the fireplace.

Before painting I took a bristle brush and cleaned the entire fireplace to get rid of dust and dirt. Then primer. My favorite primer is Valspar bonding primer. You can use a brush or a roller for this. I used both. Then came the Sherwin WIlliams semi gloss in Summer White. I used a standard roller made for smooth surfaces on the surface of the bricks and a brush on the mortar between the bricks. 

And the same thing on the bookshelf, EXCEPT that I recommend using FLORTROL. A paint additive that reduces brush and roller marks, as well as drying time. It's the best thing you can use on any kind of furniture or cabinetry if you want a more professional looking finish. 

I recommend waiting 24 hours with between coats.

How has it held up?

It's been three years since I've painted the fireplace and it pretty much looks just like it did three years ago except that which you'd expect with use. I have NOT used the fireplace at all since we moved here, so I do not know how the heat would impact the paint job. I can say that I learned to to apply more coats to brick that may be a traffic area. We have to step up onto the fireplace to reach our bookshelf so that area tended to grab dirt and was hard to clean. This is because the brick is so porous. More coats help with that, but be careful. You don't want to apply too many, too soon. It will peel. Make sure you let the coats cure in between. This does drag out the process, but you'll be trying to remove paint and paint again if you don't. Take my word for it. 

So take your time and be patient. If you do, you will have a lasting finish. 

Happy painting! :)

1977 Asymmetrical Brick Wall Fireplace Living Room update- Creating a peaceful living space.

This is not a sponsored post.

Hi guys! :)

Today I wanted to share more on the painted pieces in our living room update.

Previously I shared with you guys what our living room looked like when we bought the house:

1977 Asymmetrical brick wall fireplace with bookshelf.

And what it looks like now (with some minor changes since the first post):

But I didn't share part of the makeover like the coffee table:

This makeover was so easy! Adding wood planks to a damaged table top is a great way to restore and strengthen! Just remember to drill holes where you want your screws. This was a thrift store find for $15. The paint color is Sherwin Williams summer white in a semi gloss finish. The planks are dry brushed primer and a poly coat to seal. I will be sharing more later about the best products I have found for a lasting finish. This table is almost a year old since the refinish and is holding up beautifully. 

Or the piano makeover:

Piano Before

 

Or the Dresser:

$20 Garage sale find. Only needed a little caulk and some paint and she is good as new.
I hope to run across a before picture somewhere for you guys. Until then, I really need to get better about taking before pictures. 

For furniture refinishes I like to roll on a coat of Valspar bonding primer using a cabinet foam roller. It keeps you from having to sand first and it sticks to glossy surfaces. Just let it dry for 24 hours in between coats. It makes the biggest different in the adherence.

I like Sherwin Williams semi gloss paints the best out of all I have used. They seem more durable. They put on a lot of sales and let you combine coupons. Though I have used olympic paints and gotten a good results, the Sherwin Williams paints are much longer lasting in my personal opinion.

My biggest secret to a professional finish is FLOTROL. A paint additive that makes the paint roll on more smoothly, evenly and prevent brush and roller marks. It also decreases drying time. I LOVE the stuff! I use a cabinet foam roller to apply paint unless the piece is ornate. In that case I use my sprayer. More on that another time. I was able to use a brush and roller for all of these pieces thanks to FLOTROL.

To keep from having to move the furniture outside (because it's freaking heavy), I roll the pain (Yes I said pain. Painting sucks.) on inside and just lay plastic under it first. I recommend letting each new coat of primer/paint dry for 24 hours in between. It really makes a big difference. The biggest key to a great finish is patience. And did I mention FLOTROL?

That's all for today. My kids are driving me as crazy as my inability to add more detail to this post. Thanks ADHD. Now I must go and offer them the food peace offering they are demanding of me lest they have to make something for themselves and forget how to keep jelly on the plate instead of the cabinets, walls and floors.

Which brings me to the following question;

Why is the floor still sticky after the kids clean a spill? Or the husband, for that matter. They are so stinking smart, all of them. You would think it wouldn't be beyond them.

Well... I better go prevent this from happening. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post. As always, please comment with any questions!