An Affordable Interior Door Makeover

An affordable interior door makeover that anyone can do! Transform those boring hollow core wooden doors into gorgeous modern 5 or 6 panel doors.

Interior doors are expensive. It really adds up when you have to replace three or four doors, which makes an interior door makeover so appealing! Our upstairs hallway has been completely untouched. Nothing. Nada. Since we moved in.

The upstairs as a whole has been largely neglected until earlier this year when we did our first quick Master Bedroom Refresh. But we're finally sharing another project to improve the look of our upstairs hallway, and it's a very affordable interior door makeover that I know you all will love!

*This post was sponsored by Valspar Canada. As always, opinions are 100% my own. For more information, please see my disclosure page.*

These are our current hallway doors. The boring, hollow core wooden doors that you've probably seen in many homes over the years. These doors were actually originally found at a local Habitat Restore.

My husband's parents built this house. They did everything as affordably as they could, which meant picking up a lot of second-hand items. They have worked great and served their purpose, but my modern-loving soul was dreaming of an upgrade.

When I started this project, I shared on Instagram, and I honestly did not know if they were going to turn out! But I'm happy to report that I love the end results.

How Do You Know if You Door is Hollow Core?

Before we get started, it's important to know if your doors are hollow core! You can often just tap on the door to see if it sounds hollow or solid. However, this isn't always the case.

The more reliable method is to remove the door from the frame and if it's easy to lift, then it's likely a hollow core door, since hollow doors are much lighter than solid doors. Although, if you have solid wood doors, you can also easily do this project on wood doors too.

Video Tutorial for our Interior Door Makeover

For all of the visual learners, we made a video tutorial of the entire process. There are a few things that are easier to learn visually than through words, so I hope this make the process clearer.

An Easy Interior Door Makeover

Transforming your doors is as easy as using a circular saw and a paint brush. Anyone could do this transformation, and I mean anyone!

Materials Needed for Door Makeover

• Paint: Deep Well by Valspar
• Track Saw
• Tack Cloths
• Orbital Sander
• Handles

How to Cut Your Interior Doors

The hardest part of this entire project is cutting your doors. Honestly, I was a bit terrified to cut them. It's only a thin wood veneer on top of a hollow core and it's dangerously thin for someone to be cutting it! But we took is slow and it worked.

I wanted five equal panels, and four cuts separating them. Our door was just about 80 inches tall, so we measured every 16 inches and made a mark, and then drew a line across the door so that we knew exactly where to cut.

Once your thin cuts are made, give everything a very light sand. Just enough sanding to roughen up the surface and allow the paint to adhere. When you're done, you can turn our door over and make the same cuts on the other side as well if you wish.

We made our very thin cuts (approx. ⅙th of an inch) using a track saw, but you can also use a circular saw with a straight edge, or a 2x4 board clamped to the door to act as a guide for your saw.

If you don't have a track saw, here's a great video on how to cut those straight lines without one:

How to Paint Your Interior Doors

Painting is the easiest part of this project! Although also the most time consuming, lol. Each side of your doors will require two coats of paint. I used a small foam brush (thank you dollar store!) to get into the grooves that I had made with the saw. Then I used a large roller to paint the fronts and sides.

I wanted deep dark doors, so I chose to use

*This post was first published in August 7, 2019 and has since been updated.