diy | Hicks House

The 1980’s called and they want their door knobs back. One of the quickest and easiest changes we’ve made to update our house is the door hardware. The house came with cheap builder grade brass door hardware.

I honestly don’t understand why they even still make hardware in this horrendous color, I’m pretty sure that no one besides the builders buys it anymore. After replacing all of the hardware in the condo we were bummed to be looking at polished brass again.

This time around we wavered on what exactly to replace them with. Should we stick with traditional knobs, or switch to lever handles? Buy new, spray paint the ones we already had? What color – brushed nickel or oil rubbed bronze? The endless decisions put this project on hold for a bit as we wavered back and forth with what we wanted. I’ve seen a lot of oil rubbed bronze across the blogosphere but also seen painted black doors which I love. Although we’re still unsure if we would want to ever paint our doors black, oil rubbed bronze hardware would rule it out – too much black.

We eventually settled on lever handles in brushed nickel. They would match the rest of the hardware throughout the house while still being “different”

Changing it out only took Ken about 15 minutes per door. First he unscrewed the hinges one at a time.

Then replace with a new hinge one at a time so you never have to actually take the door down and it should still line up properly with the routered out hinge holes.

We also added these little “stops” to the top hinge on the doors that would come close to hitting a wall.

We found these hinge packs at home depot, that were WAY cheaper than individually buying hinges however the brushed nickel seemed to be constantly out of stock. Another delay.

The next step was to remove the door knob. The inside piece gets screwed into the slot in the side of the door first.

Then screw in the new handle.

And lastly screw in the catch on the door frame.

Ta Da! All done!

Doesn’t it look pretty? It’s so fresh and more modern, and less shinny

And for comparison sake here is a side by side. It’s so much less reflective and eye blinding.

So what do you think? Do you like it better? Would you have gone for the lever handle or stuck with a traditional knob?

I apologize in advance if you’re sick of the painting posts. Since the beginning of the year it’s been our main house priority. Especially being in New England and the wicked weather we’ve had this year we are pretty much stuck indoors.

As I mentioned in this post the color we chose for our guest room was Stonington Gray. It’s one swatch down on the same color strip as the Coventry Gray we used in the dining room.

If you are looking for a little refresher on where we last were with the guest room we were here:

shot of them both

I had also created the custom pillows to put on the bed with the intention of eventually altering some curtains to match.

Here is the inspiration room we are kind of “modeling” the style of the room after.

getting closer to the inspiration room…

So far I think we’ve got the bedding nailed. 😉 I actually like my pillows better – I’m not a huge fan of pink. We followed the same painting technique we’ve done in the other rooms we’ve painted so far which is I cut in the ceiling with Ken following behind taping off the baseboards and side of the doors and windows. The taping generally takes less time than the cutting in so Ken then moves on to rolling the walls while I follow behind getting all the top of the baseboards and next to all the window and door frames.

In the end we’re left with this:

What do you think? I love that the gray in the walls makes the white nightstands, dresser and trim POP. It’s still a little too much white though so here’s what’s still left to do.

~~Get pretty bedding~~
~~Create custom pillow covers~~
~~Get and assemble nightstands~~
~~Spray paint the old hand-me down dresser white~~
~~Paint the walls~~
Make a custom painting for the wall
Hang the awesome mirror I found at Khols above the dresser (you’ll have to wait to see it – but it’s perfect for this room
Hang curtain rods
Create custom removable “bottoms” to much too short white Target curtains we already own
Make second set of pillow covers and curtain bottoms – so we can switch it up whenever we want