Closet Doors

The first week after we bought the house we ripped out the gold-mirrored, floor to ceiling closet doors in the hallway and promptly threw them in the dumpster! Whew.... But wait. We had nothing to replace the doors with. Consequently, we have been staring at our junk pile in the closet for nearly 3 years. Now, it wouldn't be so tragic except for the fact that the hall closet is prominently positioned in the front hall right behind the glass wall where our tiki fountain focal point sits in the atrium. Doh!
I started my search for door options. Flush panel, floor to ceiling doors were the easiest and most affordable option, but they seem too heavy and dark for the small, dark area at the end of the hall. Hmmmm. Then I found this photo of a shoji screen door design and knew that was an excellent option. Now, where do I get them?

We really like the natural look of the panels in this photo, but most shoji screen closet doors I found have glass panels. Time to get creative!

Several years ago I was given a roll of grass cloth wall paper. (Thanks, Ty!) At the time I didn't know what I would use it for... I just knew that I loved the look and would find a way to use it in the house. Grass cloth paneled doors are just the thing I need for the closet! We contacted our favorite door supplier to see if we could get the doors made without the panels. Then we could make and insert our own panels covered in grass cloth wall paper! Easy.

Apparently, I am developing this nasty habit of asking for things that are nearly impossible to create. And if it can be built, it will cost a fortune! Once my eyes stopped burning from viewing the door frame bids (seriously, ranging from $1400 to $2200 for ONE SET of 60" x 92" closet doors... just the frames...OUCH!) I started drawing up plans. Steve has tools and skills. I knew he could make these frames.

Here's the plan:


Supply List:
6) 3" x 8' Hemlock boards
2) 28" x 88" Masonite boards
2) cans of spray adhesive
1) roll of grass cloth wall paper
1) standard closet hardware kit
1-1/2 inch brads
1/2 inch staples
primer paint
oxford brown paint
utility knife


Simple frame construction. These are fairly light weight so they didn't need to be over-engineered. Steve just toenailed the pieces together with 1-1/2 inch brads.

Primer coat on.

Final coat of Oxford Brown. (2 coats)
Preparing to spray the Masonite and grass cloth with adhesive. (Hint: I had Lowe's cut the Masonite to the exact size I needed. They offer this service at no extra charge and there's no need to get out the jigsaw or table saw at home. Yay!)

Trimming the panels. We cut the wall paper a bit bigger than the Masonite so we could get a perfect edge for trimming.

The grass cloth panel looks amazing!

Attaching the panels to the door frames. 1/2 inch staples did the trick just fine.

Installing the the closet door hardware. This is just basic, bedroom style sliding closet door hardware. We didn't show the metal track we attached to the ceiling, but trust me... it was super easy to hang.

The finished doors in place. I've gotta admit that it's much better than looking at all our junk in the closet... and it's far better than the gold and glass doors that were there when we moved in! We still have to put up a piece of trim to cover the metal track that the doors are hanging from, but that project can wait for another day.


Total cost: $75
Time: About 3 hours labor; 4 hours of paint drying

Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with this one. I never thought we'd be making closet doors, but I never thought we'd be renovating a house from top to bottom either!

Pulling It All Together

Haley loaded up all these pictures. I think they rock... it always surprises me how well our home photographs. Anywho, I'm not sure what to say about these except, enjoy the eye-candy!

Floor Prep, VCT Installation and Polishing

We had hoped that the floor would be fairly straightforward and simple. I suppose it was, but there were a few things that needed doing that we didn't know would need to be done.

Example: the two pictures below. It looks like John (our expert floor genius... he did the VCT in our loggia & hallway) is smearing a bunch of dirty cement on our crisp & clean plywood subfloor. Well he is because unlike the particleboard sheets he wanted us to use as a subfloor, plywood has grain issues and a few of the joints were either too wide or were splintering a bit.
(We elected to use 1-1/16" tongue & groove plywood instead of particleboard mostly because of structural issues... there was a large crawlspace access hole where the fridge needed to go and a mysterious crawlspace hole in the family room. Frame in a few supports, lay down the super heavy duty plywood and that's one sturdy floor!)

A little dry-time and sanding and the floor was ready for Armstrong VCT.

After the VCT was down... let's polish that stuff! We found a great floor guy (who also works the pro-desk at Home Depot) who does floors on the side. We had him strip & polish the new floor AND the now dirty loggia/hallway floors in hopes that the transition between the loggia and the kitchen would be as seamless as possible.

It reminded me of a pint-sized Zamboni. this machine did the finish stripping and I think layed down some of the wax... I hear it took 6 coats of high gloss wax!!!

And to bring out that shiny finish, here's a high-speed buffer taking care of business in the loggia near the atrium.

The gleaming finished floor. It almost looks wet!!! AND it's super slippery when wearing socks (which makes it perfect for moonwalk lessons).

Sheetrock finishing

I was conflicted about taking on this remodel challenge.

On one hand, our contractor told us that unless we used the sub-contractor she sent out to give us an estimate (of $1,500... original guestimate was $700), the cabinets wouldn't hang right, we would be unhappy and have to tear it all out and start over, which would cost us even more money.

On the other hand it looked so simple, most of the sheetrock would wind up being obscured by cabinets, tile and/or appliances and I do have a little experience with sheetrock*. After giving all the walls a coat of primer, I'm confident the cabinets will hang just fine.

We painted the beams, too... first the white primer, then two coats of Rodda Oxford Brown.

Today, the finished flooring is being installed. I hear that we're going to need about 75 pounds of floating compound. I can't wait to see how it looks!

*Our first home was a 1912 bungalow. We had a baby on the way and since the upstairs wasn't insulated, I tore into the baby's room to insulate, weather-proof and update some of the electrical. It was a room with angled ceilings, a dormer, double-hung window and a pony wall. Nothing was even close to being square. I ended up having to use a lot of mud to fill in gaps, but when it was finished it looked great and our little baby girl had a nice, toasty space for her crib.

Tile is gone. Concrete board is on it's way out!

We spent the weekend removing all the tile from the kitchen and office nook. It was really quite the job, and learning from our past experience with the loggia floor we rented an electric chisel. Steve got to work on it and he made it look so easy. So I thought I'd give it a try... NOPE! That thing had to weigh about 40 pounds and I was only good for about 3 tiles before my girlie arms gave out. So I turned it back over to Steve and he made quick work. I demoted myself to debris hauler... carrying bucket after bucket of broken tile to the dumpster. (Sadly, I was still sore from that little job.) Steve's hands were thrashed after wielding the power chisel all day, and then he had to hurry off to play 3 sets at Portland's Scream at the Beach. I don't know how he does it all!


Our contractor let us borrow her large crowbar thingy. It worked great for prying up the concrete board and removing the nails. We still have about 1/2 the concrete board left to tear up, but it should go pretty quickly. The boards in the office nook were screwed in so that may prove to be interesting.


The floor guy is coming in tomorrow to measure and order the VCT tile. We are using the same tiles that we put in the loggia. It will really simplify and clean up the look from room to room.

Walls Out. Beams In.

The wall between the dining room and kitchen is gone! (Thanks Steve.) The tiny wall between the family room and dining room (the one with all the tricky wiring in it) is gone, too. A new beam now spans the opening from the dining room to the family room.

The pantry is totally gone (yikes) and the whole space now feels huge and very open. I know that it will close up a bit as we put the drywall up and cabinets in, but it seriously looks like a new house. Here are a few pics to show the progress.

The pantry is really gone:

View from the dining room:

View from the family room:

View from the loggia:

New beam with all the wiring hidden inside:

Replacing the beam by the eliminated pantry proved to be a little challenging. With the new beam secure, our beam guy took out the old shorter beam. That shorter beam was the main support for a few of the tongue and groove pieces. But that's not a big concern because tongue and groove lends stability... except for the section where the short beam was hiding 3 boards butting up against each other. Ugh! We ended up installing a metal support strap to hold those boards together. Now, we need to re-skin this small section of the ceiling. Since it's sandwiched between the beams, it shouldn't be too challenging to blend it with the rest of the ceiling. We haven't been able to locate 1/2" x 6" tongue and groove, but Steve has some creative ideas for this project. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does.

The new beam now lines up with the beam in the dining room:

Ceiling boards where old beam was:

Metal strap screwed in place to stabilize the 3 boards in question:
The beams are in and secure. Next project... the floor!

We've found a cabinet guy!

Yep! It's true. Met with Norm Dickinson yesterday to go over the cabinet design. He stayed for 2 hours discussing all the details, finishes, and options. He was very reassuring. He believes this job to be fairly easy and has no doubts that he can translate our vision into a real kitchen. Since he is the one actually making the cabinets, I am very relieved and have no anxiety. (That's a good sign.)

Bonus Points: he fell in love with our 11" x 17" color print out of the kitchen from Case Study House #22. He asked if he could take it and put it up on his shop wall. YES!

Also, Steve completely removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room last night. It is so open now. Beam guy should be here soon to finish up the beams and ensure the posts and tongue and groove ceiling are structurally sound before we proceed.

Color Renderings of the Kitchen Design

I seriously don't have the time to be playing around in Photoshop, but I can't help obsessing over the kitchen design. A new cabinet guy is coming out today to take measurements and we are very excited that he understands the style we are wanting. I created these renderings from Steve's design to ensure that everyone is on the same page with the design concepts. We'll see how the meeting goes today. (Fingers crossed.)


Here are a couple of back splash ideas... We are at a complete loss as to what to put there. All white seems too "white", but we do not want it to be busy. We've had fantastic luck with the Hakatai mosaic tiles on our bathroom and pool projects, but I'm not sure it's right for this space. Please let me know if you have any brilliant ideas!