The Rustic Door

When we bought our "new" house we had already noticed the "fine" craftsmanship that the previous owner had hired out.  The wood doors and trim were all hung wrong and they were all partially finished in a Fruitwood stain.  Some doors scraped the floor when opened and some magically shut on their own.  With 19 doors total we knew this was going to be quite a project so this weekend we started with our first door makeover!

I fell in love with the post from From remodelaholic.com.  She used a new frontdoor and installed straps and metal "buttons".  The front door turned out beautiful but I wanted to use the concept on an interior door and make it more economical.  And so it begins!

Since the door had fruitwood stain on it with no poly my hubby lightly sanded it keeping most of the fruitwood stain.  (We did not want to remove all the stain so all the trim would match the doors)

I neglected to take a picture of the "before" door but I hadn't started on the back of the door yet and it is comparable to what the front looked like.  Here is the before:

As you can see it is pretty bland.  The black doorknob has already been added to replace the shiny brass one.

The door was taken off it's hinges (brass ones) and lightly sanded to smooth down some of the rough spots.









Now for the supplies :





Stain and polyurethane.  Rustoleum has a great stain that contains more color pigments so only one coat is neccesary.  Love that!



I bought three new hinges although I think it would have been possible to spray paint the old brass hinges.  I'll try that on the next door.









These buttons are for covering the bolts in newel posts for a staircase.  After searching all over Lowes for something appropriate I found these on the bottom shelf in the trim aisle.  Cost was $1.80 for 6 and I needed 28.  Story of my life.



Since the buttons were going to be painted black I opted for a black interior Schlage.  These are very well made knobs and they don't come cheap.  This knob was $21.00.  I thought about spray painting the brass knob black but I didn't know if the finish would hold up so I went with a sure thing. :-)

Next up was practicing on scrap wood for the dimensions of the buttons.  A little less than 1/2 inch in diameter and about 1/8 inch deep.  This allowed for the lip of the button to sit perfectly in the hole.

Now it was time to begin!  Since it is January we brought the door upstairs so it could be stained in a warmer environment.  The door was put on two sawhorses with a heavy guage plastic underneath to catch any spills.  I practiced with the buttons in different positions before I found a distance I liked.  2 inches from the edge of the wood looked perfect to me so my husband made a template with a two inched border and a mark in the middle.  He then centered the template on each panel and used a nailpunch to mark the center.  When all 28 were drilled out I took a tack cloth and cleaned all the dust and debris from every surface on the door.  One piece of dust can ruin the whole finish so make sure you don't skip this step.

Hubby took the 28 buttons and set them up in the garage and painted them a satin black.  There was no reason to paint the back because it wouldn't be seen....ever. :-)  After the black dried he sprayed on a satin polyurethane and after about two hours they were dry and ready to go. 

I used one coat of the Rustoleum autumn and made sure it was a thin even coat and slowly removed all the bubbles.  You have about a 10 minute window to smooth the stain out.  This brand of stain is suppose to be dry in one hour so work quickly and carefully.  I worked on individual sections at a time in case it started drying on me.

After the stain was dry I applied a thin coat of satin polyurethane in sections like I did the stain.  Try to have plenty of light in the room so you can see if you missed any spots.

After a few hours the poly was dry and it was time for the buttons!  I dropped a small amount of gorilla glue in each hole.  Be careful with Gorilla glue because it will expand up to 3 times so less is more with this product.  After the glue was applied I carefully dropped each button in the hole and pushed each one down to make contact.

After two hours the glue was set up enough to install the door.  Hubby added the new doorknob and hinges and I absolutely love it!  All of the rest of the doors will be getting the same treatment so 18 more to go!

Here are pictures of the finished project!