Evolution of a Hallway: Changing out your boring doors

Well long time no see!!  I realize that i have been a terrible blogger these past three months.  And by terrible, I mean, I haven't blogged since October.  WHAAAAT???!!

Yup.  It's true.  I like to blame the holiday season but in reality, I'm probably just lazy.  There, I said it.  I'm lazy.

We also haven't had much DIYing going on either.  In fact, the only real DIY thing we've done is installed new 6 panel doors in
our upstairs living space.  All of our doors were previously the hollow core, oak veneer doors and while they did the job, they definitely weren't very pretty.  I wanted something that reflected the clean and classic look we are going for.

I initially thought we would have to spend some pretty big money in order to replace these doors and as you may know by now, I'm cheap.  I put off this project for 6 years because of that until one day I was perusing around at the ReStore and found ALL of the doors we needed for, get this...$5 each!!! Brand spankin' new, slab doors, no holes bored and no mortises done, in all the sized I needed!!

I freaked out a little that I might be able to get all of the doors I needed for a mere $25. But then the worst thing that could have happened at that moment, happened.  While I was getting out my measuring tape to make sure I had the right sizes, a man appeared out of nowhere and grabbed on of the doors I was yet to measure!!! AHHHH!!!  I panicked!

I must have really given off the creep vibe as I sat there staring at him like a vulture just waiting for him to get his mits off of MY door.  I don't really know if he just decided against it or if I was just that creepy but he put it back and I snatched it up.  Whew!

Sometimes when I'm in there shopping, I kind of feel like I'm on Supermarket Sweep.  Anyone remember that gem? I feel like I need to throw anything I might be interested in, into my cart for fear someone else will swoop in and take it.  Yup, I'm that territorial, I guess.

Remember how I said I was lazy? 

Um, yeah.  I am, because I bought these doors in May!!!! Yes, you read that correctly, MAY!! 

 They have sat, untouched, in my basement, until the night before we were hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  It's how I roll I guess.  Shouldn't I have had something better to do with my time that night? Probably.  But I didn't care.  I wanted doors.

Mr. Serene was on board with the idea too, so we got out our tools and got busy.

I will save you a huge amount of time and not go into boring detail as to what we did.  Mostly because I am sure that it's probably not the "correct" way.  It worked for us though so I'm not too worried about it.  There are tons of tutorials and videos out there in bloggy land!

We just removed our old doors and laid them down on top of our new slab door.  We clamped them together and marked all our holes and mortises based on the old door's markings.  This saved so much stress because we didn't have to bother with measuring.  Using the old door as our template, we knew that they would line up perfectly.

     

And they did!!!  

I couldn't be happier with the new doors and it feels so light and airy in our tiny hallway now.  

I still have to paint them all the way but I'm still getting over this lazy thing I got going for me.  I totally blame winter!