DIY Pantry Door Upgrade!

Our open plan living-dining-kitchen area works great for all purposes, but I wanted to add some fun to this boring kitchen pantry wall. We have two big pantry cupboards which I love, but all seemed too white in this area of the home with no texture or interest.



I, of course Googled and Pinterested (is that even a word?) around to get a lot of ideas, and the most inspirational for me was this blog from Sherri. I wanted to convert my pantry flat doors into a paneled door with trim and a chalkboard.

I'm sure you've seen lots and lots of blog posts of completely transformed doors, and I am going to share with you one simple transformation that is so easy and fab to do, and the best part is you can use this method to dress up whichever room door you like.

Supplies:

• Decorative trim (We got this one from Bunnings)
• Tape measure
• Tooth saw
• Pencil 
• Clear timber varnish
• Miter box (for cutting at 45 degree angles)
• Liquid nails/Wood glue
• Door Primer (We used some wall primer we had lying around the house from when we painted the walls)
• Paints:
      - Acrylic paint (if you want to paint your trims)
      - Chalkboard paint
• Sanding block/Sand paper/ Sanding machine
• Spirit level 

Directions:

1. Measure and mark how you want to place the trims.
2. Here's how we drew the panel out on the doors. We wanted a pretty standard panel look for the doors so we used 5" on the sides, and top and bottom we did 7" up.
   
   
3. After you have your panels drawn out it's time to measure them to cut your trim. We bought our trims from Bunnings. These are 18x11 mm clear pine wood ones and come in 2.4 m length for about 5$ each.
4. Cut four pieces of the trim at 45 degree angles after measuring correctly with the help of the Miter box. We sanded off any rough edges with the help of the sanding block.
5. Now is when the paint fun begins! I gave the wood trims a bit of the distressed look. Painting with acrylic paints (cobalt blue, brown, and blue lake) and then slapping some varnish on.
   
   
   
   
6. Put masking tape on the edges of the drawn out lines, sand them to get the primer to hold better, and then slap on the primer.
   
   (We thought the sanding would not be required, but we were wrong. So, we sanded after the initial coat of primer, and hence had to redo another two coats afterwards.)
   
    
7. Then put the chalkboard paint on. Get about two coats for a good finish, keeping about 2-3 hours in between coats.
   
   
8. We then placed all the cut trim pieces on the door and glued them down with the help of Liquid nails making sure they were all placed straight with the help of a spirit level. 2-3 small nails on each of the trim were placed to prevent movement while drying. Also, we wiped out any glue seepage.
   
   
   
   One done, another one to go:
   
   
9. I then filled in any edges that were not smooth with leftover chalkboard.
   
   
10. After a day of letting the chalkboard paint cure, I placed a layer of chalk over the top of it.
    
    

 And then wiped it off 1-2 times with a damp microfiber cloth to season the surface for use. It looks so much fun already!

I scribbled and doodled some kitchen-related fun sketches taking inspiration from Pinterest to add some oomph to these blank chalkboards.

Here are the final sketches:

And one shot of the doors side by side:

One more shot. I just love how these doors have turned out. So much fun and character!!

Here's a quick before and after:

Hope you are inspired to change something in your home!

Love,
Divya