Closet Doors

The last golden oak in our house was on the pass-by closet doors in the three upstairs bedrooms. In an effort to match our new doors, rather than buy new doors, I decided to make the existing ones into shaker-style paneled doors, with the help of some hardboard. Here is what they looked like before:

I took some quarter-inch hardboard and cut it down into strips about 3-4 inches in width (can't remember exactly - I mostly eyeballed what looked good, and did that same thing for all of the strips). I then glued and clamped them to the existing doors.

By the way, if you do something like this, I recommend adding some support at the bottom if your door (with the bottom support) has been cut down (mine was hollow at the bottom with just veneers showing). This makes it easier to clamp down your panels. Also, I recommend using quarter-inch plywood instead of hardboard. Hardboard doesn't work as well when painting, it doesn't sand well, and it just kind of squishes at the end if it gets hit. I won't use it for anything like this again.

After I got the panels glued and filled and sanded, I painted with my favorite: General Finishes Milk Paint, Dark Chocolate color. After that dried, I added a polyurethane topcoat, and added the door pulls (went with a nickel inset handle - the old ones were shiny brass).

I then of course ran into some issues with finding a door glide that would accommodate the increased width of the door, so I couldn't be choosy. But I finally found one on Amazon. Here is the finished result.