We recently updated the door hardware and even some of the doors in our home and it’s made an amazing difference. This project gave me the chance to save a few old doors, too. They turned out so good Courtenay asked me to share a few tips on how to restore old doors.
Here’s how you can easily restore old doors and make them functional again by repairing damaged areas and adding modern hardware.
As you can see, the area on the end near the latch looked pretty rough and the mortise-style lock set would be difficult to repair or replace. You can also see a small crack in the closest panel as well. Time to get to work…
To get started on the restoration of this old door we need to remove the old lockset.
In order to fit a new, modern style knob set into this door we need to layout the position of the new lock and cut a new main bore hole and make any adjustments to latch hole.
With the holes drilled out, check fit and function of your new holes. Make sure the latch lines up with where our repaired edge will be when we’re complete.
- [Psst! Are you an Avid-DIYer?! You may also like: Everything You Need to Know Before You Install Open Shelving in Your Kitchen]
Now, it’s time to measure and cut our wood patch. I used a piece of pine cut from a regular 2×4 because pine is easy to work with. The downside with pine is that it’s soft and may damage again easily but with a patch this small and a quality paint to cover it, I wasn’t too concerned.
Apply a coat of primer to the areas that were repaired and give the entire door a new coat of paint. When the paint has dried, completely install your new knob set, faceplate and strike plate…
Looks pretty great, right?!