We recently installed all new doors and door knobs in our home and it has made such a difference. Interior door updates are something that we often don’t think about, but they can make a huge difference in the way your home looks and feels.
I had the chance to partner up with Schlage Canada earlier this year for a simple (but not so simple) update to all of the doors in our home. We worked on this project over that last few months while the weather was still cold and while we thought it was going to be an easy, quick-fix type of project, we of course had our wonky old house to deal with so there were a few “interesting” complications along the way. The results are pretty great though! It’s amazing what a difference interior door updates can make in the way your home looks and feels. Interior doors are something we don’t think of as a necessary home improvement, especially if they function just fine, but installing new doors can really make your whole house feel fresh and new.
Adding New Doors and Keeping Some Old Ones
For our project, we updated the ugly old flat panel doors that were in all of the doorways throughout our main level. We didn’t really notice it so much before, but even though we had painted the old doors recently, they were still a bit dented and scuffed and they were really making our house feel more sad and outdated than it needed to. We just installed basic hardware store doors throughout the main level, but even that made such an instant difference. The classic 6-panel style works perfectly in our 120 year old home.
Of course, nothing is really entirely simple in our old house, so even just installing those basic doors was a bit of an adventure are times. We discovered at one point that the door frame from the old door between the kitchen and living room was actually kind of holding up our house, so we had to reinforce that a little bit while we rebuilt it properly. As a result, the new door we put in is actually two inches smaller than the old one. The funny thing is that so many people who have come to our house have said “Wow! It looks so much more open! It’s great that you were able to put a bigger door in there!” So even though the new door is smaller, it somehow looks and feel bigger than the old one. 🙂
We really wanted to keep the doors to the three bedrooms upstairs. These doors are solid wood and full of character and were definitely worth a little bit of extra work to maintain. We’ll be going into a little bit further technical detail about how we went from the old style of doorknob to our new Schlage Custom knobs in a future post.
New Door Knobs: The Finishing Touch
I was so thrilled when I first discovered that these new knobs of ours from Schlage Canada exist. Don’t they look like they were made for our home? These knobs are part of the new Schlage Custom Line where you can choose your knob style and then choose a trim style and finish and put it all together to create your own custom look! The knobs that I used are called “Hobson” and I combined it with the “Century” trim, which matched the Schlage entry door hardware that we have leading from the side porch into the mud room.
It’s amazing what a difference installing new doors in your home can make, and it’s even more amazing when you choose a beautiful door knob style to complete the look! Even if you’re already happy with your actual interior doors, just adding in new knobs can have such a huge impact in your home.
I’m honestly not really 100% sure why new doorknobs seem to make such a difference, but they do. Maybe because they’re a decor element that is repeated throughout all areas of the home? Maybe it’s because they’re something that you come face-to-face with and actually touch when you go to open a door so you really take notice? What I do know is our whole house just seemed a whole lot fresher and a whole lot less neglected as soon as these were installed!
Interior Door Updates: Before and After
So let’s look at a few before and afters! As I said, we updated all of the doors in our home and some of these transformations were pretty dramatic!
Here you can see how the door between the living room and kitchen looked before the upgrade.
And after!
The door in the kitchen before:
And after!
This doorway was actually the original back door in the house when it was first built, even before the kitchen was added on, so we exposed the old brick doorway as well and added some new trim. I love how the old and new just came together perfectly here. 🙂
We also added the new Schlage Custom knobs to a few doors that we had already updated over the last few years, like the fun mint green French door leading out to the mudroom…
…and also the door to the master bathroom that we renovated a few years ago.
I’ve used quite a bit of dark metal hardware around the house, but I used all super shiny chrome in this bathroom. I love the Schlage custom doorknob, with its dark trim and shiny glass Hobson knob kind of ties the two styles together.
Finally, here’s the upstairs hallway where we were able to keep the old solid wood doors but update them and tie them into the rest of the house with the new knobs!
Before:
And after!
Before:
After!
Have you ever updated your interior doors? What type of door knob style would you choose if you could create a completely custom look like I was able to?
Thank you so much to Schlage Canada for sponsoring this post!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.