Our downstairs renovation has pretty much come to a close. Last week, Revive was here to do most of the punch-list items. We are still awaiting our new microwave, which is now delayed until after the first of the year. But for the most part, the work is done.
Very late in the game, Tygh and I decided to take the plunge and add new closet doors in the three old bedrooms. We hemmed and hawed about it for months. Tygh knew how much I disliked those sorry-looking closet doors. But we had busted our budget time and time again with this reno. Mostly because of me.
Those doors were original to the house. Louvered, flimsy and very out-dated. The doors in the old master bedroom didn’t close correctly. I had concocted a brute-force system of forcing them to close.
A lot of work had happened in those bedrooms over the summer. Old brown molding was removed. Beautiful new white molding was installed, caulked and painted. We sanded and painted the old brown window sills a lovely white. Tygh took out the old intercom system in each room as well as the phone-jacks from where land-line telephones were placed many moons ago. He painstakingly sanded and patched the walls. Then we painted the walls. We used a lovely color from Sherwin Williams, called Silver Strand. Even as the paint was drying, we were admiring how nice the rooms looked. At one point, Tygh said “boy those closet doors are like big old farts in the middle of each room”. Bingo. I had my opening to lobby for new doors! Our budget took a hit. Again.
Here is a picture of one of the old doors.
And our lovely new closet doors. We still need to paint them and patch and sand around them and do touch ups. But even in this state, they are 1,000 times nicer than before!
In hindsight, I wish that we had decided to do the closet doors early on in this project. Because the old closet doors were not a standard size, Revive had to do a lot of work to install the new doors. If we’d ordered them early on, we wouldn’t have to sand and repaint the area around the doors and touch up the brand-new molding that was installed just a month or two ago.
But we live and learn. And move on. I’m still very, very happy to enjoy these closet doors for the next ten or fifteen years we are are here. And I think whoever loves this home after our turn is over, will appreciate them, too.