How to add new door molding {our front door}

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Last summer we added on a new portico around our front door and we finally just finished adding the new door molding inside. Sometimes these projects linger on for months. We decided to add a piece of pine board to the top of the door (to the ceiling) to define the two rooms on either side of the door. This also allowed a place for the paint to stop! Before, the entire wall (which covered two rooms) needed to be the same color because there was not place to stop a color and add a new one.

I asked my dad if we could beef up the door with molding in order to accomplish these two things:

a) give the illusion the door was larger and

b) have a place to stop and start a new paint color

His response, “what’s wrong with just leaving it all one color?” He thought about it over night and came home the next day with a pine board and said, “will this work?”

AFTER:

My fancy camera was having a small issue this day so these pictures were taken with my cell phone so they are not the best but you can see, the door needed a little cosmetic work ;).

When we removed the old door, we had to remove all of the old trim. The old door was over 50 years old and of course, the new door didn’t fit exactly in the same space so we used pine filler to fill in the gap between where the old door space and the new door.

After:

Once we cut the pine filler to size, we nailed it to the existing door jam and filled in the gaps with spray foam insulation. Here is an image of what it looks like from Home Depot.

You can see below how we sprayed it in along the top of the door.

Here is the door completely trimmed out with the pine insert pieces.

We added primed 2.5 inch wood trim molding that we picked up at Home Depot around the door along with the pine piece at the top. After a couple hours, the door looked fabulous and the two rooms are now separated and ready for their own color! Be sure to check out our latest DIY project on our Home and Projects page. New stuff is added daily!