Brightening up my home

I've had "installing doors" on the to-do list for a LONG time. I forgot to take pictures of the old ones but there's an example of the dated and unattractive doors in this old post. Somewhere I probably have pictures of the door frames that were in horrible shape, but I couldn't find them so I'll explain one of the problems. At some point before I moved in, the screws for the hinges had stripped the wood in the frames. Instead of replacing or even repairing the frames, they flipped the door and screwed the hinges into different places in the same frames. You could see the damaged areas of the frames... plus the frames had a ton of coats of paint on them (the house is 60 years old after all). I've been living with upside-down doors since I moved into my house... until now.
Today, I finished installing the brighter, white doors upstairs. I did the small closet door on my own a while ago, but had help from my brother and neighbor securing the two bedroom and the bathroom doors. Some of the installation was trial and error (story of my home repairs!) so here's what I learned.

First, secure the door knob side of door at top with shims.
Secondly, nail in frame with 2 or 3 nails on each side making sure the frame lines up with the drywall.

Then, shim the hinge side of door making sure it's plumb.

Shim the door knob side of door.

Finally, check the door closure and adjust as needed.


I did some of these steps out of order with one of the installations and it took way longer than it should have. I saved myself a lot of time and frustration installing the last two doors this weekend because I had typed up those steps. It wasn't frustration-free though because I did bend a few nails and smashed my thumb once (I have a nice fever blister to prove it). I need to pay more attention when I'm hammering and take breaks when I get tired. In my defense, twice the nails got caught in knots in the wood so they were going to bend regardless of one's skill.
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These doors look much better than the old ones and the bathroom even seems bigger with the white door. Next up, adding the casing. I was hoping to do that for some of the doors today, but am missing a tool that will make it much easier. Instead I filled in the nail holes with spackle and did a few other touch-up things. Guess I'll make another trip to a hardware store (story of my home repair life!) so I can add casing next weekend. If I'm super productive I may even paint everything a real white instead of just leaving them primed. I suspect that will be a project for a later weekend though.

Not that the doors aren't nice to look at, I'll leave you with these prettier flowers that I bought to brighten up my downstairs. Thanks for checking out my house progress after such a long delay between my posts! I have done more work in my yard and stained a lot of fence panels recently, but didn't have any big tips to share with those project.