Doors & Trim Project

This was one of the most stressful but rewarding projects that we have done. An overwhelming majority of mid-century modern homes will feature flat slab wooden interior doors. It makes sense as wood is a primary and needed material when designing mid-century modern correctly. When our home was built in 1966 it featured hollow-core Lauan doors throughout the house. A cost effective solution used at the time (and even up until today) that looked great. It would be complimented by trim that matched accordingly.

The company that flipped our house removed all of the trim and doors and replaced them with plastic white 6-panel doors and ornate white pine trim. Complete opposite of what the style should be for a mid-century home. It was a project we wanted to do since the beginning but other projects took precedence.

When the time finally came for wanting to move forward we contacted a couple local millwork companies and the prices were through the roof. We ended up going through Lowes where you could call the special orders number and arrange to have them made by their millwork team. We put in an order for 14 doors and waited about a month and half for them to arrive.

Going back to this being the most stressful project we have done, this was due to the trim not working like we thought it would. We picked up some pine boards thinking we would be able to get them stained close enough to the Lauan. We were completely wrong and after many attempts we gave up. We did more research and found Sapele Mahogany was going to be the closest option to Lauan. We found a local millwork company, picked up a sample, and then put in a custom order for trim and casing. They matched absolutely perfect and all it took was having a slight mental breakdown, but it got us to the right point, so it was worth it.

Another problem we ran into was the flippers installed all of the previous doors incorrectly and, which was whatever since they were coming out, but they rigged up every door to look like it fit. This included caulking everywhere, using boards to fit smaller size doors than originally installed, nailing random wood pieces to other pieces that didn’t end up nailing into anything, using spackle instead of new drywall to fill in gaps, etc. The list goes on and instead of an easy uninstall and reinstall of the new doors, we had to fix all of the shortcuts that the flippers took.

To view the products we used in this project please visit the Doors & Trim Products page!