DIY Pantry Door

If you have plain pantry doors, a stunning DIY upgrade is easier than you think! I made this door for our new pantry, and it looks incredible!

After months of toiling away on our epic kitchen remodel and concurrent pantry remodel, I got to the point where everything was finished but three little details.

1. I hadn’t made a backsplash for the beverage area
2. I hadn’t painted the range hood
3. The pantry was doorless

Now, none of these deficiencies really jumped out like a turd in the holiday punch bowl. No one knew we were planning to limewash the hood or tile the backsplash, so no one would miss them.

But they might notice and miss a pantry door. To be fair, the pantry is beautiful enough to stand on its own without a door.

I mean, who wouldn’t want a direct view into this beauty?

But houses have rules and kitchens must follow them. Doorways should have doors.

Now, everyone knows (or at least I do) that rules are made to be shattered to smithereens.

“Of course doorways don’t have to have doors!” you’re screaming at your screen. “What about a beaded curtain!” After all, you know (as we all do) that the 70s were a hell of a time.

And then there are the minimalists who fail to see the purpose of doors and the nihilists who fail to see the point.

But all that aside, a pantry should have a door, if only to keep out wandering animals and other unwanted riffraff!

If you recall the hideous white monolith that segregated our rice and beans from the outside world before this remodel, you can understand my reticence to re-hang it. If you don’t recall, here it is:

It would be like painting the Mona Lisa and then framing it with elbow macaroni pasted onto orange construction paper.

But a glass door – now there’s a barrier with vision! Except, a full-size swing-out just wasn’t going to cut it with the new kitchen. And a bifold? Well, my babes deep-sixed that idea, though she did buy a bi-fold.

Instead of the standard accordion fold, the Shrimp wanted me to turn that bifold into a stunning French door with cremone bolts.

This, of course, led me to turn away from her, fiddle open my phone and search just what the hell a cremone bolt was.

Armed with my new-found knowledge, I set out to make some French doors for our pantry!

DIY Pantry Doors VIDEO Tutorial

Watch our short and fun video below for an overview of our Pantry Doors before you read the tutorial.

If you’re going to replace a builder grade door with something nicer, then you absolutely must replace the builder grade casing. Not to do so would be akin to strapping on your most glamorous ballgown, pearl earrings, a diamond necklace, twirling your hair up into a towering beehive (or whatever hairstyle is trendy right now), pulling on a pair of silk gloves, and then completing your gorgeous look with a pair of 24-inch rainbow-colored clown shoes.

So off comes the casing.

Since these doors were going to be more French than a croissant surrendering to a plate of sauerkraut, I wouldn’t be needing the strike plate mortise anymore.

Ditto the hinge mortises on the other side.

After removing the hinges from the bifold, I took the two doors outside to stain.

I attached some non-mortise hinges to the french doors and then hung them in their places.

These doors didn’t need a fancy casing – just something with more pizazz than the builder grade casings every single one of us has in our homes. I chose simple 1×4 select pine and stained it the same color as the French doors.

I attached the new casing with brads.

What an improvement!

But I still needed a way to keep the doors closed. Yes, I was planning on installing on cremone bolts, but cremone bolts latch simultaneously into the door header and the floor. Considering we just had a new tile floor installed, I took a dim view of drilling holes into it. I prefer sleeping with the Shrimp, not the fishes.

The solution came in the form of a ball catch, or two, to be precise.

Installed at the top of each door, these were the perfect solution.

The final step was installing the cremone bolts. Since I didn’t need them to bolt anything, I trimmed them down to size and screwed them onto the doors to function simply as handles, not locks.

I re-mounted the doors, and now I’m one step closer to being done done done with the kitchen remodel!