Ugly Door? No More!

Back in February, I finally closed on my house purchase. This 127-ish year old home needs lots of care and attention that it didn’t get in recent years. I have zero home improvement skills, and close to zero budget (though if more of you subscribe to the blog, perhaps that can change! Ha). Some of the easier things to accomplish involve taking the really ugly stuff and trying to make it … slightly less ugly.

the ugly door

The main floor has a little powder-room off the kitchen. In a dream world, perhaps it would be gutted, but that’s not going to happen. It isn’t even going to be painted. However, the atrocious hollow-core door (not historical, just cheap) was FULL of holes. I was not prepared to buy a new door (this necessitated a discussion of trim, which I was frankly not prepared to engage with at the time).

So, in comes… IKEA. Obviously.

placemats?

I went to IKEA back in March to get a lamp, and ended up finding these placemats. I had a vision that I could use the placemats to cover the ugliness on the door, and they would create kind of a low-key, zen, earthy situation. And perhaps distract from the fact that the bathroom door runs right into the fridge. (This is also an issue for another day).

I got three different mats after flinging them around the floor at IKEA, bothering the other shoppers, and finally deciding that it would probably work out fine. You can find the three options here ($9.99), here ($3.99), and here ($8.99). If I could have done them all with the thin white ones, that would have definitely been easier to secure to the door, but I wanted the other colour tones too.

stick ’em up

I used double-sided tape to stick them up first. Then I could move them around and adjust to get them in the position I wanted.

Check out the whole video of the process here.

Once I was sure I was happy with it, I used small nails to secure them to the door so they didn’t fall down. Usually I do things like this, and they fall, and scare the sh*t out of me.

As a final product, I don’t think it’s too bad. It’s monumentally better than staring at the giant holes in the door.

pin this: