DIY Hollow Core Door Upgrade

Do you have boring and basic hollow core doors that you want to upgrade? Well the lake house had just that. These outdated doors from the late 50s have never been touched. While I kinda dig the gold handles, I think that something done to the face of these doors could really make them pop. Now, I'm going to first start by removing the door. I'm also going to remove the handles. I'm going to label the tops of each door. This will allow me to know which ones go back where. A lot of times rectangular doors fit very specifically in their jams. You can see the bottom of these doors was cut very unevenly from when carpet was originally installed so the first thing to do is square off the bottom. Now I'm doing a cross cut on these hollow doors and they have a lot of tear out but there was already so many blemishes to fill that I didn't put painter's tape down on my cut or score it. I maybe should have but I basically just measured and then set up a straight edge. I ran my circular saw to square up the door. Next I filled blemishes with the two part putty bondo and I did this throughout the door. There was many like dents and divots everywhere and when that was drying I decided to try filling the grain on the hollow door panel with some watered down plaster of paris. I didn't actually end up doing this on all the doors because I tested it out on a couple and didn't think it was worth the extra work. Now I have to get everything sanded smooth. I used a 120 grit sandpaper until it was smooth to the touch. I'm going to take the door to my table saw now, setting my blade very very shallow at only 1 16th of an inch and I'm going to run grooves in this hollow door. Now the panel on the door is very thin so you have to be careful. I tried to balance the bulky door through my table saw but it really didn't work out well. My cut ended up having some areas where the blade jarred side to side and this made for a very ugly cut. So the next day I tried again, this time with my adjustable workbench set completely level with my table saw to create a great infeed that can support the door all the way in through the table saw blade and then my outfeed supports it on the way out. This allowed me to finally get the perfect kind of cut I was looking for. The way that I tackled this project truly wouldn't have been possible without my adjustable workpro workbench so I'm going to talk more about that product now. This video is sponsored by workpro tools. You're going to see me using workpro tools throughout my video because of their power, their versatility and their amazing quality. I have used workpro tools for two years now and I definitely recommend them, especially their workbenches. Now this workbench I want to show off in this video is super cool. It is very, very heavy duty made with high quality steel and a thick rubber wood top. It's rated for up to 500 pounds. The top also has a waterproof and scratch resistant coating for lasting durability. The workbench is height adjustable using the hand crank that turns easily and tucks away or completely removes when not in use. At its lowest, the work table can be 29 inches tall, perfect for a petite person to use in a variety of circumstances. The highest it goes to is 38 inches, which works well as a standing desk or to bring whatever you're working on into better view. This is completely customizable for a more ergonomic workspace. Large heavy duty casters allow the workbench to be mobile and move easily wherever you need to use it. They can also lock in place and hold strong when you need them to. However, you can also assemble it with the stationary feet provided that you can adjust to perfectly level. This product is straightforward and well made. Click the link in the description to check it out. The rip fence allowed me to quickly change the width of the grooves I'm cutting in my door. And for this reason, I thought the table saw was a great choice to do this project. You could also use a track saw, but I just simply don't have one. You might wonder at this point, what style I'm going for? Well, this is to mimic a plank style door. It's a very primitive way of putting together a door that's been around for ages. It has kind of a modern look because those vertical lines look like, you know, tongue and groove shiplap, but it's also perfect for a cottage type of house because it is such an old fashioned way of putting together a door. Obviously this is the faux version, but I just think that this little change is going to add so much style and dimension to these basic hollow doors. If I messed up a cut, I just filled it with bondo, sanded it smooth, and then ran it through my table saw again to fix it. Cutting the door panel vertically did result in some splintery pieces, so it's important to run your sandpaper in the grooves. And then I did a quick sand across the top as well before priming all the doors. I did six of these doors and I created grooves that looked like about six inch wide planks. Now it's time to set up for paint. I am going to spray my doors against my fence, so I clipped up some plastic to protect it from overspray, and I'm going to nail these little scrap pieces of wood into the tops of the door so that when I lean them against the fence, none of the painted surface touches the plastic. It took me a long time to decide on paint color, but what I landed on was the wall color French beige that I watered down so it could go through my sprayer, and then I added a ton of semi-gloss white paint, which is made for trim and it's very durable for the doors. This just really lightened the wall color and it made sure that I got a creamy color that was going to complement the space. Before painting, I gave the doors one last quick sand and I like to use a sheet of sandpaper wrapped around a peanut sponge so there's no sharp edges and this is just a really light knockdown of any kind of texture that came up with priming. A cordless spray gun was used to apply the paint to these doors for a perfectly smooth finish. Now I was kind of racing against the sunlight here because this was my last day in Minnesota above 50 degrees and it was really intense. Luckily with the pieces of scrap wood nailed on the top of the door, I could paint one side and then use those to carefully flip the door and continue on painting so I could get this all done in one day. When the doors were finished, I actually highlighted the grooves that I cut using a brown paint pen and the reason I decided to do that was because I am not planning to paint any of the trim on the jam around the door and I wanted to get some brown on this design to pull it together and kind of make it match. I did replace the old hardware, I just shined them up a bit with rub and buff on the areas where the gold plating had worn away. Remember what these hollow core doors looked like in the beginning? I really thought it made the hallway dark and boring and now they are so bright and unique. I love what a huge impact this little change made and that I was working entirely with materials I already had. I didn't have to buy anything new for this project because everything was left over or repurposed. The plank style door, especially painted in that creamy white really goes with the modern cottage style that I designed the whole lake house in. I love that that brown color accented in the doors grooves pulls in the trim work color. Do you think it matches well enough with the jam and baseboards? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this project below in the comments and I really appreciate you watching Welcome to the Woods. Don't forget to subscribe if you love home DIY.