Trim and Door Choices

Often I have to refer to my catalog of inspirational photos when building our house or making decorating decisions. This time it was for window and door trim and doors.

I hate the "typical" trim that is in most houses(like ALL the houses I've lived in). It looks wimpy and cheap. I love the trim that is in old houses. Large, but not ornate.










I love how it give a new home an older craftsman look. And yes, it does cost more. But this is the one thing I can't/won't upgrade at a later date(not like a light fixture or faucet). And with a big picture window in the living room with our couches centered in front of it, I'll be staring at the trim everyday, either loving it or hating it. So, while we are pinching where-ever possible(lighting, plumbing, flooring, cabinets, countertops, rugs), I decided it was worth a little splurge to really upgrade our house into something really special looking.

As for interior door options, our supplier had these:


I liked the simple clean lines of the circled one. Again, I really don't like the typical 6-paneled doors. General rule-of-thumb: If everyone has it, I don't like it.

Since it was the "smooth skin" kind, I searched for pictures of doors in my inspiration rooms, so see what those people had in their houses. Funny part is, no one takes pictures of their doors. So it was really hard to find a door photo in a real home. I did find one picture of something close to this door. It has the smooth skin(instead of that fake wood grain texture), but ours has raised panels. I prefer the one in the photo, but ours are fine too. You can barely see it in the far right of the photo.




So, this is a larger version of our door selection(already installed in our house):


We actually only have 3 doors(master bedroom, bathroom, and pantry). We're not installing a door in our walk-in closet. I'll hang a curtain to save space. We really don't want to be fighting a door in our small room. The second bedroom doorway is a double wide(accessed through the master), which we are keeping opened for now. I love how much light it lets it. It makes our bedroom feel so much bigger and you are surrounded by windows. Lastly, the laundry closet needs bi-fold doors which WILL be the standard solid 6 panel doors because our style door doesn't come in bi-fold style.

Selecting the exterior door(our front door) was not so simple. I had a few functional requirements. The main one being that there was a window on the top, low enough for me to see out of on tip toes, but not low enough for people standing outside the door to see in. The door is positioned in the hallway in the middle of the house, so say one of us is in a towel in the bathroom or even living room and there is a knock on the door. Well, you have to walk past the window to get to the bedroom for clothes. Not good.

I found several from the vender that I liked. Three with the proper window, two with bigger windows.




I love the two on the end with the larger window, but I don't think I can live walking past that window all the time(and the stairwell is hidden, so there won't be any sunlight coming in anyway). So out of the first 3 I like the 2nd one best. I even made a little diagram showing what it might look like next to the bi-fold closest door(they're right next to each other in the short hallway).



Ok, now I like the 3 panel even more. I told our contractor to order it.

Then, he found out the price and told me....

$500

Um....no.

They are all $500.

So they all got scrapped and we are getting el cheapo from Lowes with the yucky arched window.



















It's fine. It's normal. So I don't like it. But it's $200, so it's ours. In reality it won't be seen that much and won't show from the outside from the outside of the house, so it's not worth the extra moolah to get a fancy one this go-round. Save that for our next house. So much for all that time and thought.