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Updated: Apr 4, 2022 by Kris Jarrett

Update Your Closet with this Flat Panel Door Makeover!

Almost all of the doors in our house are standard six paneled white doors. My daughters’ closet doors are where the “almost” comes in – they were flat paneled hollow doors that stuck out from the rest of the space like a sore thumb. So as part of the recent remodel of my tween daughter’s bedroom (definitely check out this fun “before” and “after” room remodel if you haven’t already!), I decided to glam her flat doors up with a DIY makeover! 

Loving this flat panel door makeover! Step by step tutorial for this DIY are included in the post!

So much better than the boring, flat ugliness that these doors had going on before:
The "before" of our flat closet doors before dressing them up with molding

And the whole project was done without any power tools – no miter saw, no brad nailer, nada – other than a simple drill. I’ll show you how (post includes affiliate links – see my full disclosure statement {here}). The materials that I used included inexpensive panel molding that I bought at my local hardware store (you want a low profile molding – mine measures 1″ wide and 5/16″ at its thickest point),

The low profile molding used to dress up our flat closet doors

a miter box like {this one}:

Miter box used to cut molding at a 45 degree angle

wood glue (I used {this glue}), some small brad nails, a hammer, a drill, caulk, wood filler, painter’s tape, a level, and paint. 

The first step of the project is the one that takes the most time – deciding what type of pattern you want to create and figuring out the measurements for each piece of molding that you’ll be cutting. The closet doors that I worked on were each 30″ wide by 79 ½″ tall. These are the measurements that I used to create my paneling pattern:

The measurements of the molding pieces added to our flat closet doors!

Once I figured out how long each piece of molding needed to be, it was time to go to town with the miter box and cut all of my molding pieces to size. The molding was easy to cut but there were lots and lots of cuts to make so it took a while – about 2 ½ hours from start to finish. If you have a miter saw, by all means, use it but otherwise just crank your iTunes and get sawing like I did!

Before jumping any further into the project, if you are going to replace the door’s hinges, do it now! Sometimes new hinges can slightly change the alignment of the doors and you want them in their final position before you start measuring and leveling the molding pieces. Now it’s time to mark up the door, making measurements with a level and pencil to mark the spots where the molding pieces will go. Once I was done doing that, I taped each of the molding pieces in place with painter’s tape and double checked that everything was level and aligned:

Such a great closet makeover done by adding moulding to a flat door!

To adhere the molding to the door, I added a line of glue to the back of each piece of molding and pushed it into place, securing it to the door with the blue painter’s tape and wiping away any excess glue. A tip here is to not put too much glue on the ends of the molding pieces – if you do, it will smush out and go under the end of the neighboring molding piece, gluing the end of that piece down before you’ve gotten a chance to put glue on the rest of the back of it. 
Gluing molding to a flat closet door - love how this turned out!!

Using glue alone worked great for all but about six of the long molding pieces. These pieces were not totally flat and so both ends would not stay flush with the door while the glue dried. For these difficult pieces I added a small brad nail to the end of the molding piece that was sticking up to get it to stay down while the glue dried.

Nailing molding onto flat doors - love how this turned out!

Since even small brad nails can easily split the wood of molding as thin as the panel molding that I was using, I predrilled a tiny hole in the molding before tapping each brad nail in with a hammer. Once the glue has dried, the painter’s tape can be removed and the small nail holes can be puttied and sanded.

The final step is to caulk any gaps and paint the entire front of your doors. My doors had oil-based paint on them so I used Benjamin Moore’s Advance, which you can use to paint over oil-based paint yet it cleans up like latex paint. The only thing to be aware of is that there’s a long dry time between coats.

For the closet door pulls, I bought IKEA’s 13″ TYDA handles – unfortunately they don’t sell these anymore but {these 11 ½″ pulls} are quite similar. I spray painted them gold with {this gold spray paint (Design Master’s Gold Medal)}:

Long gold pulls dress up these closet doors - love this flat door makeover!

And with that, my closet door makeover was DONE!

I'm so going to do this to our flat closet doors! Love this flat panel door makeover!

I love how they turned out and most importantly my daughter did too! If you have some flat doors in need of a little TLC, I hope you found this helpful! Be sure to pin the image below so you can find this post when you’re ready to tackle the job ->

LOVE this flat panel door DIY makeover - such a huge difference!

Update! I made over the flat closet doors in my other daughter’s bedroom too but in a totally different way! Check out another great flat door transformation {here}!

Hope you all enjoyed seeing this project and I’ll see you back on the blog next week!

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Categories: Closets

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. [email protected] says

    May 16, 2014 at 7:54 am

    Fabulous!

    Reply
  2. Denise Greenwood says

    May 16, 2014 at 8:23 am

    These doors are amazing Kris! I love the shape you chose. Great job and great tutorial!

    Reply
  3. Cassie @ Primitive & Proper says

    May 16, 2014 at 8:55 am

    love this so much! i pinned it and would love to do this in my home!

    Reply
  4. Lisa @ Shine Your Light says

    May 16, 2014 at 11:55 am

    I love the design you created, Kris! So stylish and such a great way to transform those basic hollow doors!!!

    Reply
  5. Holly Gruszka says

    May 16, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    Wow, I really think that this doesn’t look so hard after seeing your photos. It definitely looks a lot more difficult than it really is I guess. Big look for not a lot of $$ – that’s awesome. Great work!

    Reply
  6. Vel Criste says

    May 16, 2014 at 1:52 pm

    This was one of the great features in your daughters bedroom, and I love that you shared this awesome tutorial Kris!

    Reply
  7. Carrie @ Cosy Carolina Interiors says

    May 16, 2014 at 2:37 pm

    I have been waiting for this tutorial! Thank you so much for posting how to do it. 🙂 I just LOVE how it turned out!

    Reply
  8. Kathleen says

    May 16, 2014 at 3:13 pm

    I still cannot get over how good those doors look. It’s such a huge change. The hardware was a perfect match. Great job and thanks for the tutorial!

    Reply
  9. jeanette says

    May 16, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    you nevah cease to amaze me Kris!!! I wish I had flat doors to do this cute treatment to……i know this was alot of work, but it was so worth it….luv the gold handles too…..i just bought a gold spray paint at WalMart for another project of handles, but if it’s not the right gold, then i’ll hunt for yours….
    kudos Kris!

    Reply
  10. Anonymous says

    May 16, 2014 at 8:27 pm

    So beautiful! I admire your talent!! Diane

    Reply
    • Kris @ Driven by Décor says

      May 17, 2014 at 10:47 am

      Thank you so much Diane! Enjoy your weekend!

      Reply
  11. therelishedroost says

    May 17, 2014 at 2:44 pm

    Really great job!!!Have a good weekend!

    Reply
  12. Julie Taylor and Danni Greenwalt says

    May 19, 2014 at 10:13 am

    That looks so much better…great job!

    Reply
  13. Tracy Laverty says

    May 19, 2014 at 3:30 pm

    Oh, I just love these doors you did! And those handles are from IKEA? Wow! I only wish I had flat doors to transform! Beautiful work Kris.

    Reply
  14. Jennifer @ Dimples and Tangles says

    May 19, 2014 at 9:48 pm

    This is SUCH a great makeover, Kris! I have a few bare doors around the house that I would love to use this treatment on!

    Reply
  15. Elisa of Fancy Free Me says

    May 21, 2014 at 2:29 pm

    Thanks for sharing your wisdom, did you leave the doors up the entire time you did this project?

    Reply
  16. Dana Frieling says

    May 30, 2014 at 8:27 am

    Fabulous! I’ve been trying to think of a pattern for our doors and your post just sealed the deal for me. It’s crazy how simple details can make such huge transformations!

    Reply
  17. NB says

    June 20, 2015 at 1:50 pm

    Thanks for this! I have a similar “before” door situation and your wonderful step-by-step guide has inspired me to transform it!

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      June 22, 2015 at 1:01 am

      So glad that you got some inspiration from this post – I hope you love your new doors!!

      Reply
  18. Ann says

    October 14, 2015 at 5:29 am

    Marvelous!

    Reply
    • Bertha Ossachuk says

      April 26, 2016 at 5:03 pm

      Like what I have seen s0far but would like to see something a little simpler thanks

      Reply
  19. Melinda says

    February 13, 2017 at 7:45 am

    Stylish & classic… You did a great job with the doors!

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      February 13, 2017 at 12:26 pm

      Thank you so much Melinda!

      Reply
  20. Betty in Arlington says

    February 13, 2017 at 10:04 am

    WOW!

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      February 13, 2017 at 12:27 pm

      Thanks Betty – glad you liked it!

      Reply
  21. Tammy says

    February 14, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Love it!

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      February 20, 2017 at 12:12 pm

      Thanks Tammy!

      Reply
  22. Ivory says

    March 05, 2017 at 12:50 am

    Wow, absolutely fanstatic

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      March 15, 2017 at 12:49 am

      Thank you so much!

      Reply
  23. Karrie Kitzman says

    October 31, 2017 at 9:31 pm

    How did you hide the doorknob holes? I have the same doors but my knobs seem larger creating a larger hole to hide.

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      November 10, 2017 at 4:44 pm

      I was fortunate that the holes were really small and I could just fill them with wood filler and paint over them. Most closet door knobs aren’t drilled all of the way through – they’re just screwed onto the front of the door – hopefully that’s the case with yours because then all you need to do is remove the knob and fill in the holes with wood putty!

      Reply
  24. Karrie Kitzman says

    October 31, 2017 at 9:35 pm

    This fits my midcentury modern home. I have bedroom doors to do as well and considering same diagram but just 2 figures per door and looking for knobs to fit the bill. I am copying your door exactly if I can hide the holes.

    Reply
    • Kris Jarrett says

      November 10, 2017 at 4:46 pm

      Ahhh… didn’t see this comment before I responded to the last one. For bedroom doors you would probably have a big old hole so I think you’d have to keep some type of true doorknob on them unfortunately!

      Reply

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