A little bit back my friend Kenz posted a tutorial about how to add faux moulding to your house, and I started looking all over my house for a spot to try this out. Then, in my last kitchen update post I started giving my basement door the stink eye and knew it was time to get my paint on.

When we first moved to the house there was no door in that frame, so we went out and grabbed one for $10 at the Habitat for Humanity Restore… and even though it was a bit knicked up $10 is a steal for a solid wood door.

I spackled and sanded & spackled and sanded to fix the issues, then gave it two coats of primer and two coats of pure white Behr paint.

But what kind of blogger would I be if all I did was paint a door white and leave it? Not a very good one. So now I’m going to teach you how to add faux moulding without doing any math. Because math is hard and makes my head hurt… unless we’re talking about money in which case I’m all over it.

ANYWAY, I had 2 inch thick Scotch Blue tape and 1 inch thick Frog tape. I put two strips of Scotch all the way around the door, then 1 strip of Frog Tape inside that. That way all my moulding would start 3 inches in from the sides and top. Then, I needed to divide the door in half so there’d be two sections of moulding. I took my level and added a strip of Frog Tape above the handle and below the handle.

Now that I had my outline I had to give myself something to paint. Here’s where it’s time to get creative. You know those free paper Ikea rulers you can get at the door? Well, I carry one around in my purse all the time. For measurement emergencies. And it just so happens to be 1 inch wide. And I just so happened to want my moulding 1 inch thick. So I taped the measuring tape next to the Frog Tape border I had up, then carefully added another strip the the other side of it. I moved around the door doing this until I had two boxes outlined:

Even though you don’t need to measure anything, do be sure to check everything is level as you work your way around the door.

You could just stop here and start painting, but I wanted to be a little more fancy then that. I decided to use this inspiration picture (also supplied by Kenz) because I figured straight lines would be easier to work with then curves. Basically, I cut a little square out of each corner of my moulding so that it dipped in. Not so basically, it took me over an hour to do this. I had to stare at the door for a very long time to figure out how to do this because I’m an idiot and was trying to paint this inversely (as opposed to painting the whole door the color I wanted the moulding, then taping off the molding and painting the door color over it). Eventually I got it looking like this with the help of a cardboard square template:

I painted 2 coats of Behr Manilla Tint (the color of the kitchen) and took the tape off carefully while the paint was still wet. Voila!

ooooh! ahhhhh!

It’s super subtle, but just gives a bit of dimension to a plain white door- without making it overpower everything else going on in the room.

Please let me know if you have any questions on this… also do be sure to check out Kenz’s post because she did it a bit different then me so maybe you’ll prefer one method over another.

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Linking up with: Someday Crafts, Monday Funday (via VATW), House of Hepworths, & Liz Marie Blog