Interior doors can make or break the look of a home. Replacing a set of ugly contractor-grade, hollow core doors with more unique, higher-end interior doors, like shaker-style, can take a home from looking cheap to looking fabulous. Unfortunately, shaker-style interior doors can run anywhere from $160 to over $1,000 each. Switching out a single regular door for a shaker-style one is out of many people’s budgets. Since the average three-bedroom home has more than 10 interior doors, a complete overhaul is well above what most people are able to spend. There is a budget-friendly secret to upgrading plain interior doors, though. 

Attaching a few inexpensive yardsticks to your doors and painting over them can give your home the custom shaker-style look, without the hefty price tag. For this DIY interior door upgrade, you just need yardsticks, sandpaper, a hand saw, a nail gun, wood glue, paint, and painting supplies. This is a great way to give your home’s interior doors a much-needed makeover. This is also a unique and super-easy DIY that you can use elsewhere around your house. Yardsticks can be purchased at big-box home improvement stores for about $1.50. The number of yardsticks you will need to buy depends on the size of your door and the design you will be implementing. 

This project can be done with the door on its hinges, but to make the process smooth, it’s a good idea to take your door down and work on it in an open area. The first thing you need to do when you have your door down is to remove the knob and any other hardware and clean and sand the door smooth. If there are any nicks or cracks, you can repair them with wood filler at this time. 

Then, lay your yardsticks on the door in the desired configuration. Make marks with a pencil on the door around the yardsticks, as well as on the yardsticks where they will need to be cut. If your doorframe has trim around it, measure its width and reduce the measurements on both ends of the yardsticks by that amount so the door closes properly when rehung. Use a saw to cut the yardsticks, apply wood glue, and press them onto the door. Use a nail gun to ensure each yardstick is secure. When the glue has dried, paint the surface (here are the best colors to paint interior doors) and rehang.

This is a great way to make your interior doors look high-end, but you can use this idea elsewhere around your home, as well. Upgrade your kitchen and bathroom cabinets with a yardstick shaker-style look using the same technique. This idea is also great for putting an upscale touch on dresser and nightstand drawers.