The two doors I bashed together for the rowhouse are the white and stained versions of the Newport door from Majestic Mansions. Though both pictures on their website show the sunburst with the lines cut out (so the color of the surface behind them shows through), only my white door came this way. On the stained door, the semi-circle at the center of the sunburst was cut out but the lines were etched into the wood. This one one of many slight differences between the two doors, that made me wonder if the door was redesigned at some point.

I didn’t want a contrasting color to show through, so I cut a piece of posterboard to place behind the sunburst.

I painted this mossy green, and then glued it to the back of the sunburst.

Here’s how it looks in place.

After cutting my side trim, I mistakenly thought that it was too long and sanded it down. The porch might have been sitting on something that made it slightly taller than it should have been. So, I had gaps at the bottom of the trim. Rather than cut and paint new pieces (because I’m lazy!), I decided to try to cover up the gaps with more trim. More on that in a sec.

First, I had to figure out what to do with the gaping hole at the bottom of the door.

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One of the first components I splurged on for this house was a Bespaq Newport double door for a whopping $34. Not entirely sure what my color scheme would be, I got the white one, thinking I could paint it. But then I realized the door wouldn’t easily come apart — unlike a Houseworks door, the pin hinges are hidden (no way to pull them out and remove the doors from the frame), plus the windows (which are real glass) don’t slide out. The idea of painting it gave me a conniption. So I splurged again and got the wood version… which I also wasn’t entirely happy with. It just seemed too dark and put the house off balance.

I recently checked out In the Victorian Style again from the library to get some ideas for my fireplaces, and while I was flipping through it I saw a picture of a San Francisco Victorian that had a stained door and realized what the problem was. I needed a trim that would match the windows etc., but a stained door. (I’d actually thought of this already — combining the two doors together somehow — but seeing the picture in the book confirmed it.)

Lucky for me, when I ordered my stained door it arrived in pieces. The manufacturer ultimately sent me a replacement, but this meant I had one that was already taken apart to play with. And it made me bolder about playing around, since I’d always have the whole one to fall back on if I needed to. These things are too expensive to mess around with!

I’d already damaged my white door a little by stepping on it (oops) and it had some imperfections to begin with, so I didn’t feel too bad breaking it apart. Ideally I would have just painted the white frame, slipped in the stained doors, and been done with it. But the white door and the stained door weren’t the same dimensions. The stained doors were slightly taller and wider. I’m not sure if they came from different batches or what, but it made this a more complicated project.

Here are the pieces I came up with.

The sunburst header off the white doors had a fairly thick piece of wood at the bottom of it, which made the hole too short for the stained doors to fit into. I sanded off quite a bit of this, both on the bottom side and on the top side. This had the added benefit of getting the white paint off, so I was able to stain the part that forms the top of the door frame.

After giving it a lot of thought (like, sitting and staring at the door hole for *hours*) I decided that pin hinging wouldn’t work because the top piece didn’t quite extend the width of the two doors, and the bottom is currently a gaping hole (you’ll see it in later pictures). So, I decided instead to hinge it like a real door. I don’t think these are half scale hinges but they’re what I had, and looking at my own front door for reference, they didn’t seem too large. I attached each hinge with super glue, moving the hinge while the glue dried to keep it from getting stuck, and then pushed brads into the nail holes.

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