We had an ugly metal clad solid wood exterior door that leads from a basement family room into our below grade garage. I had redone the floor and trim in the family room and was looking for a way to fancy up the door without having to spend a fortune.
Original door
Took the door off and cleaned it up
Cut 1/2 MDF to size to give the apperance of a 5 panel door
Glued on the panels, and filled and sanded all the edges. Chamfered edges
Primed
Paint added
Rehung- the MDF made an already thick door significantly thicker so I had to spend quite some time finding hardware that would work.
It’s been 4 years since this was installed and it’s held up perfect. I was worried about the MDF getting dinged, but it has not.
Thanks for sharing the story and progress. It looks really good. Did you consider routing the edges? I’m not sure if I would have a preference one way over the other, was just curious.
There is a slight chamfer on the edges that I put on with a hand plane. With MDF I knew I didn’t want hard edges since the can get dingged pretty easy. It’s held up well so far.