From Door To Door

I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about our interior doors by now – we’re definitely sick of restoring and writing about them but, as we’ve finally managed to completely finish all of them, we just had to share a few before and after pictures with you!

This is what our hallway looked like on the day we moved in.

Besides from the hideous brown Artex walls, green ceiling and cheap laminate flooring, our original Edwardian doors (and staircase banisters) had been boarded up and covered in more layers of yellowed glossy paint that could even be counted.

After some painting, restoring the staircase and sanding the floorboards, it was already looking a lot better, but the original Edwardian doors that we found under the boards were in a really poor state.

We’ve still not quite finished, but it’s already come a long way and this is what it looks like now!

As you can see, we changed the layout ever so slightly through moving the kitchen door further forward into the hallway to create a larger kitchen on the other side.

Most importantly, we finally finished stripping, sanding and painting the kitchen door.

Although we decided to go with a natural, waxed finish on all of the upstairs doors, in the end we decided to go with a painted finish downstairs – partly because we already spend hours stripping, sanding and repainting the living room door, but also because we think the white doors will look better with the colours of the walls we have chosen.

But, that’s not all we’ve been stripping, sanding and painting! We finally got round to restoring the dado rail and skirting, too.

Just in case you’re wondering why we bother going to the effort of stripping and sanding everything before repainting it, this is what our dado rail looked like before starting to work on it.

It was just covered in layer upon layer of paint. After a few hours of messy stripping and sanding our hallway looked a bit of a mess,

but our skirting and dado rail were already looking a lot better.

And after a few coats of paint, it’s almost unrecognizable.

Obviously the walls still need to be skimmed, but it’s already looking a lot better than it was.

It’s hard to tell on the pictures, but in real life it’s made such a huge difference to the feel of the whole hallway. It just all feels much cleaner and brighter.

Oh, and for the first time in 4 years of living in our home, we have door knobs on every single door! Amazing, right? Isn’t it funny how the things that most people take for granted are sometimes the things that make the biggest difference?

Have you added or changes something little in your home that made a huge difference to your life? Have you ever stripped old paint of woodwork?