Today we are SO excited to be starting our “Updating an Old Home Series” with you by sharing how to update your interior doors using Metrie doors! We decided to do this series after a number of you asked us how to simply update an old home rather than completely renovating it. It will be an ongoing series as we continue to update our older home and share how you can too!
Many of us will buy older homes and while it’s fun to renovate them, that can cost A LOT of money. Since moving into our older home last year (it’s about 26 years old), we’ve gutted and completely renovated two spaces: the laundry room and the powder room. Both of those jobs were quite extensive as we took each space down to the studs. Luckily, Chris is somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades and is able to figure out the plumbing, electrical, tile work, woodwork and drywalling! Had it not been for him having that knowledge, we would have absolutely had to hire in those trades.
So it’s with that thought, and after many requests, that we thought we’d start sharing some other areas in our home that we are simply updating rather than renovating. I mean, I guess it’s still technically a renovation, but when I hear the word renovation, I often think quite labour intensive and also quite expensive. We wanted to share with you guys how to “make do” with what you currently have in your home while still updating it somewhat to reflect your own style while also adding value into your home. Not everyone can afford a $100,000 project to completely gut their kitchens, stairways, flooring in the entire home, etc. We certainly can’t.
So that’s why we are excited to launch this ongoing series with you, where we share how we are slowly updating our older home, on somewhat of a budget, doing jobs that most people can tackle on their own.
To kick off this series, we thought we’d tackle our front foyer first! Seeing as it’s the very first spot you see when you walk into our home, we want to elevate the look and have it match the aesthetic that we are trying to create in the home.
Over the next two weeks, we will be sharing with you how we’ve updated our interior doors, the hardware in the front foyer (including front door exterior handle) and how paint changed EVERYTHING in this front hallway!
So let’s dive right in with our interior doors! When we bought our very first home in 2009, one of the things I noticed almost immediately were the builder grade doors. I always felt like they seemed cheap and I just didn’t fancy the look of them. Fast forward to owning four other homes and every single one all had the EXACT same doors. Builder grade. Cheap. Mass Produced look. Here’s a look at the BEFORE of our current home front foyer.
I always had this deep desire to change out the doors in all of these homes. I know some people might not think that doors have a big impact, but they absolutely do! Especially in a front hallway like our home now where you will find SEVEN interior doors in a small space, having the doors changed to a more unique design will have a lot of impact.
When we first dreamed of this project, I knew EXACTLY which doors I wanted – the fashion forward doors from Metrie. We were lucky enough to work with Metrie on our laundry room renovation and got our first ever fashion forward door with the nano glass inserts. It is GORGEOUS! And everyone who comes into our home for the first time ALWAYS comments about how beautiful the door is!
We only did the laundry room door at first, and because of the two doors on either side (left side closet, right side powder room), we knew that we’d need to eventually swap those out too.
One thing to consider before changing any of your interior doors is whether you want pre-hung doors or door slabs. You might wonder what the difference is, let me explain. With a pre-hung door, you will be removing the entire door casing. The door comes in its “box” (for lack of a better description) and you remove the old “box” with the door in it and insert the new one. The door is already hanging on the hinges and the hole for the handle is already cut out. The other option of getting simply a door slab is just getting the door itself, not the casing that it comes in. This means that when you go to swap out your doors, you simply remove the current door from the hinges and replace it with the new door. What this means, however, is that the new door slab doesn’t have the hinges and door handles pre-cut. You have to do this yourself.
For the laundry room, we went with a pre-hung door. In one sense it was nice that the door and casing was already put together. However, we found it a little tricky to try and level the door casing (this is quite a bit of work and a very necessary part of the job to make sure the door swings properly). We also found that it created more work with having to swap out the trim around the door casing.
So when it came to changing out the remaining six doors in our front foyer, we opted for just door slabs instead. We figured it would make the whole project easier as we didn’t have to remove the entire door casings and trim. It did mean that we had to cut out the hinges and handle hole using a jig. You can watch our YouTube video below to see exactly how Chris made those cuts in the doors, including a before and after of the front foyer so far!
We absolutely love our fashion forward Metrie doors so much, for many different reasons. First off, the aesthetic! I absolutely LOVE the circular detail in the middle of the door. It reminds me very much of French design (if you’ve ever been to Paris, you know that no details are spared on their doors). It’s just so unique looking for North American homes that it makes them stand out right away.
I also love that they are solid wood. You can legitimately FEEL the difference. Whereas the typical builder grade are made with MDF on the outside and are hollow on the inside, Metrie doors are made with solid wood. They are much heavier in feel and therefore make for a much sturdier door.
Another feature that I love about the fashion forward line is that we had a few options for the Metrie doors. For the powder room, basement and two hallway closets, we opted for the solid wood doors. For the laundry room, as mentioned above, we got the nano patterned glass. We loved this option as the laundry room has a window in it, so we knew that having a glass insert in the door would allow for some of that natural sunlight to come through, but having the nano pattern on the glass meant you can’t see all the laundry piles in the room! HA! Finally, for the two doors for my front office, we opted for the glass French fashion forward doors as we like the ability to see through the doors into the office. It makes that front entry space feel more open.
We are absolutely thrilled with how this first update project in our front foyer turned out. Chris had all the Metrie doors cut and hung in less than two days. While it does take some precision to make sure you get the cuts perfectly lined (remember, measure twice, cut once!), once he got the hang of it, it went really quickly.
Swapping out your builder grade doors is a job that anyone can do that won’t break the bank yet It will leave your space feeling like you got a complete custom upgrade! We know that we’ve added value to our home and so that’s money and time well spent without having to hire in contractors or spend a ton of money. You can do it too!
Make sure to come back this Saturday where we share part two in this series: updating hardware!
Love & Blessings,
Christine
Note: This post was sponsored by Metrie where I maybe have received compensation and/or product in exchange for my honest review. As always, the thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.
