New Doors for Our Houston Home

Projects are moving forward slowly around here. Life (and the Good Lord) sometimes make us slow down some and enjoy the ride. I finally put the wax on my new 9-ft doors that we added to our living room. We decided to add doors to this opening because our master bedroom is right through that opening to the left. With all hardwood and tile on the main level, sound carries really well into our room. Our three high schoolers are up really early and it's just too loud!

 I stalked our local Habitat for Humanity ReStore until I found a pair of used doors that would work. I was holding our for something tall so that all the openings and doorways were at the same height. That opening to the master and hallway always looked too short and squat. 

My husband had to expand the opening up and reinforce the sides to support the new height and weight of the doors. 

You can see here how low it was in scale to the TV opening. 

Ahh, much better. Everything is the right scale now.

 I'm not happy with what you see right through the doors. Yup, the builder had to put the downstair's thermostat smack in the middle of the opening. Arghh! You can't cover it up or it won't read correctly and throw off your cooling and heating. And it's not an easy thing to move. So for now, I threw up some old windows that I had. I think the frames need to be darker to stand out more in that shadowy hallway. I might try staining them darker.

 I found some fun handles at Hobby Lobby to lend a vintage/antique feel to the doors. Ideally I would have loved to find some gorgeous antique doors, but alas, too expensive and hard to find.

Since I haven't posted any real pictures of my living room, I'll throw a few now. My rug is too small for this new space, but that's not in the budget any time soon. I can't stand the tile around my fireplace so I just accepted an upholstery job to pay for new stacked stones. Neither my husband or I have done anything like that yet, but we're up for tackling it if it'll save us some money!

Aside from a new rug, down the road the floors will need to be refinished or replaced as there is a fair amount of damage to them. I'd also like to lighten the paint and cool it down some, but it had recently been repainted and one area kind of leads to another, making it a bigger job and cost than we need to do right now. After the project of adding the stacked stone around the fireplace, I'm looking to beef up and add some architectural interest to my kitchen island. A fairly small and inexpensive project, but one that'll add some nice contrast to the kitchen. Fun projects I'm excited about, but that I have to tackled slowly with my other responsibilities right now! It's so fun to add your touch to each home and make it yours!