DIY - Vinyl Stick your way to a brand new door!

Hi there!

We are back with another DIY idea!

Jo, my sis, bought her resale hdb a few months ago, and we are slowly redoing the house to her ideal but keeping it to her limited budget! We have repainted the whole house, did the arches along the walkway and in the hall, and lay overed vinyl flooring throughout the house. So, next would be the doors!

We were quoted about $300+ from a professional vinyl sticker person for per door + frame. Two doors would set her back by $600+. So we decided to DIY. In total, for both doors, we spend less than $150 with enough stickers to spare for at least half a side of a door! More on the cost and material on the next post.

How we estimated how much to order was the height of the door x3 (+- about 20-30cms) per door and frame. We ordered more just in case we made mistakes. After the floor, we thought this would be a breeze... well... it wasn't hard, but it wasn't a breeze either... 😆

We tried it two ways, too, with the door taken down from its hinges and with the door on its hinges. And surprise, surprise! It's actually easier pasting the vinyl while on its hinges!

The reason we removed the door from its hinges was because we thought it would be easier to paste the vinyl on the frame. But I believe you could probably work around it if you do not plan to remove the door. Some planning is required, but it would be workable...

Here's our step by step, you can do whats best for you:

1) Clean your door with a wet cloth. If you plan to remove your door, you should do it here.. if not, just go ahead to step 2. You'd need to remove the door handle as well for easier access and cleaner finishing later.

2) Cut the length you need for one side of the door. The vinyl sticker we got was 1.2m in width, so you would need to trim it down so that it would just overlap to the edges top, bottom, and both left and right side. This will be the front of your door. The back would just be the size of the width of the door. Start from the top, leaving enough to cover the top edge later... slowly peel the backing off and smooth the sticker down the door. You'll find it easier to do this if there are two of you, one on each side peeling off the back and smoothing the front at the same time. Always check if there's any bubble forming, as it would be easier to smooth it over as you go along.

3) Once you have done a side of the door all the way to the bottom, it's time to stick it over the edges. At this time, a hair dryer or even better, a heat gun would be useful to soften the glue on the vinyl to adhere better and also to be able to give you the sharp edge on the door instead of a slightly rounded one. Do it on all edges, the top, and both left and right sides. Bottom too if you remove the door. Otherwise, it would be a little harder to do so. Trim off the extras with a sharp pen knife by running it along the edge.

4) Do the same with the other side of the door. This time, do not stick over the edge. Instead, just trim it off along the sides. Use your hairdryer to adhere and push down where the edges meet.

5) Now, do the door frame if you intend to do so. We do not have many tips for this as it we were learning as well. By the 2nd frame, we weren't any better either... but we started on both sides of the frame lengthwise, and then we did the top horizontally. Because of the edges, we found starting with the biggest flat area in the middle, then with the help of the hair dryer, wrap it into the edge.

6) Cut out the area of the door handle. Make sure to fold into the hole so that you have a nice wrap. Fix your handle back into the door.

7) Put the door back into its hinges if you remove the door. And if you didn't, viola, you're done!

Tips:

Bubbles:

The easiest way to remove a bubble would be to scrape it slowly with your squeegee towards your unstick area until the bubble disappears. But if you discover the bubble after that, and it is nowhere near an exit, you can make a fine line cut with a pen knife and then smooth it with a squeegee. Sometimes, you have many small bubbles, use the squeegee to combine all the small ones into a bigger bubble and make your cut.

Uneven Edges:

One of our biggest headaches was the very rough and uneven edge of our door frame because of how uneven the frame is from the wall. Some parts were so shallow, and some parts were way deeper. Thus, we couldn't make a nice straight cut on the vinyl sticker. This really had us thinking twice if we should have gotten professional help instead. But then J, chance upon a tiktok caulking hack, and we tried it, and it worked amazing! The edges look so much better!

What you need to do is just tape the door frame, keeping it in a straight line.Before that when you cut your vinyl at the edge, make sure it is slightly over the frame, never mind it is jagged. But keep it very close to the edge and wall. Once taped, caulk along the wall and the door frame, making sure you are caulking over the edge of your vinyl sticker. smooth the caulk the best you can with your finger. Immediately after that, paint with your leftover paint around the wall of your frame and over the caulk. The paint is to ensure the caulk is not visible at the frame. Remove the tape before the caulk dries, and there you have it. The rough edges of the sticker are covered by the caulk, and you are left with straight edges. We were patting ourselves on our back when it was done! 😊

Rating /⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐:

Difficulty: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Worth Doing?: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

We gave a 4-star difficulty simply because the door frame was kind of hard to manoeuvre. The door alone would be a 2. Also, we had quite a few sleepless nights over the jagged edge frame, which we were glad we solved it. If you're just doing the door, go ahead!

We definitely saved some bucks doing it ourselves. And were quite satisfied with the outcome, albeit it may not be as good as professionally done.

I will share the cost and links of our purchases for this DIY on the next post as this post has gotten really long... Thanks for reading, and see you next! 😘

#Lemon8SG #diyhomedecorations #hdbrenovation #hdbsg #DIY #diyreno #sghome #homelifestyle #homerenovation #homeaesthetics