Finishing a door with laminate - how to make the entrance to your home special?

It is not known who was the first to decide to decorate the door with laminate flooring, but the idea turned out to be good and people liked it. Such decoration of the door leaf and slopes is carried out in 1 - 2 days and is relatively cheap. Let's take a step-by-step look at how to cover a door with laminate and what type of laminate is suitable for this.

Finishing the front door with laminate can become an original feature in your interior

Laminate - decor with its pros and cons

Now there are many materials on the market that can be used for cladding entrance door structures made of metal. The most popular product for these purposes is laminate, which has many operational and decorative advantages. The latter are due to the unique characteristics of this material.

Door covered with laminated panels

Standard laminated panels are produced in the form of multi-layer tiles consisting of:

• a stabilizing base impregnated with resins of synthetic origin or paraffin;
• wood fiber or particle board, which serves as the core of the panel;
• another layer of specially treated paper on which some image (pattern, drawing) is applied;
• polymer protective film.

This structure gives the laminate high strength and excellent resistance to mechanical wear and fading. In addition, the described products are characterized by a chic appearance, affordable cost and the possibility of self-installation without any serious difficulties. If you are interested in high-quality, inexpensive and quick finishing of a metal door with your own hands, it is almost impossible to find a better material.

Laminate is suitable for cladding door structures both inside and outside. However, you need to remember that it has one drawback. Laminated products do not tolerate fluctuations in humidity and temperature very well. For this reason, they cannot be used to decorate the external entrance (for example, to a private house or to the entrance of an apartment building). When exposed to moisture, the laminate will swell very quickly and lose all its special properties.

Why do you need to cover your front door with laminate?

The entrance door block is always reliable and difficult to break into. The best material for this design is metal. Arrays are rarely preferred. The door turns out to be durable. However, this is not the only thing the property owner wants to receive. The entrance is the face of the house. The beautiful design of the door and the entire entrance opening comes in second place after strength.

It is optimal to cover the front door with laminate instead of painting, and lay sheets of heat-insulating material under the finishing. The metal door will acquire all the positive qualities that it lacked before: beauty, high levels of noise and heat insulation.

After covering the metal door will become attractive, sound and heat insulation will improve

In addition to the entrance door, interior doors are often updated with laminate. Here, beauty is most often required from the cladding. Additional sound insulation won't hurt either. However, not every interior door is convenient to cover. It is best to work with blind panel doors. If there are glass inserts, it will be difficult to select and attach the laminate.

It is optimal to cover an interior panel door without glass inserts

The video shows a do-it-yourself laminate door and other useful information:

Finishing doors with panels - you will be surprised how simple it is!

Let's figure out step by step how to sheathe the entrance structure with the material we are interested in. Everything here is elementary. The work flow will be as follows:

1. Remove the door from its hinges and lay it horizontally on a flat surface.
2. Remove (carefully and slowly) all latches, smooths, locks, handles and other fittings from the canvas.
3. Paint the wooden slats in the color of the planned finish and secure them around the perimeter of the structure. Such products are fixed to metal doors using liquid nails.
4. You assemble a shield from individual laminated panels. The work is simple, thanks to the presence of locking connections on the products. You just need to make sure that all the panels are mounted to each other as tightly as possible (end-to-end).
5. Measure the distance between the individual slats. After this, transfer the measurement results to the prepared shield.
6. Saw off the outer panels to length and width. This operation is easiest to carry out with an electric jigsaw. The likelihood of damage to the laminate in this case is minimal.
7. Treat the door leaf with adhesive. Take a short pause (the glue holding time is in the instructions for its use). Then transfer the panel structure onto the canvas and press it on top with something heavy.
8. After the glue has dried, the door can be placed back into the opening.

Door with slopes after finishing

As you can see, covering your front door with laminated products yourself is a truly simple process. You just need to adhere to the given scheme for carrying out facing activities. And then the result will exceed all your expectations. Decorating an iron door should be done with laminated panels no less than 8 mm thick. It is undesirable to use thinner material, since it does not have the required operational strength.

Process components

Sheathing using laminate consists of the following steps:

1. purchase of materials and procurement of tools;
2. removing the door from its hinges;
3. preparation of slopes;
4. fastening the coating to the canvas;
5. hanging the front door on hinges.

Carrying out work with the above facing coating will be an effective option if you prepare everything necessary in advance. You will need the following materials and tools:

• wooden slats;
• platbands;
• glue;
• corner made of plastic or MDF;
• sandpaper;
• polyurethane foam;
• thermal insulation material (optional);
• clamps;
• screws for metal and wood;
• dowel-nails;
• electric jigsaw with a thin blade;
• drill with drills;
• perforator;
• mallet;
• metal scissors;
• square;
• roulette;
• level;
• pencil.

A door finished with laminate should look more attractive. Therefore, before covering it, it is removed from the hinges and the protruding fittings (latches, handles, lock plates, peephole) are carefully removed.

If an old metal door with non-removable hinges is to be sheathed, then some effort will be required to remove it. There is no need to worry if any of the front door slopes are slightly damaged as a result of this process. It will also be covered with laminate.

Slopes - do they need to be lined?

If you want your home to always be warm and drafts to be avoided, you should definitely take care of high-quality cladding of door slopes with the same laminate. The finishing of these elements gives the entrance metal structures an attractive appearance, as it hides the areas where the box is attached. Sheathing the slopes also increases the structure's resistance to burglary. And this, you see, means a lot these days. You can form slopes in three ways:

1. Sealing with mortar and subsequent plastering.
2. By gluing the sheathing material.
3. Frame cladding.

Paneled door jambs

The easiest way to implement the first two options with your own hands. But you should understand that you will have to do dirty and wet work - stir the solution, apply it, wait for the composition to harden. Not every home craftsman will want to get involved in such events.

An alternative to wet finishing is the technology of frame cladding of slopes. You will need to make a simple skeleton from wooden blocks and a metal profile. And after that, strengthen the laminate on the frame (in the transverse or longitudinal direction) using universal self-tapping screws. Note that vertical wood slats should be fixed at the edges and in their central part, and horizontal slats should be fixed only at the edges. After simple work you will get perfectly smooth slopes. The door itself will be perceived as a single structure.

How to update interior doors with your own hands: partial restoration

Over many years of use, various defects and damage appear on the surface of the doors - with careful handling they are minor, but with careless handling they are large and deep. In any case, all these damages significantly spoil the appearance of not only the door itself, but also the room as a whole. They, of course, can be painted, but over time, layers of paint worsen their condition - besides, not every door can be refreshed in this way. For example, veneered and laminated pieces cannot be updated in this way. Let's look in more detail at how you can carry out partial restoration of doors depending on their decorative coating.

Doors for painting. These doors are the easiest to restore partially or even completely. There is only one reason and it is called paint - the fact is that such decorative coatings hide all the flaws quite well. All that needs to be done to completely disguise them is to thoroughly treat the surface of the door with sandpaper, putty all the potholes and scratches, then again abrade the doors and re-coat them with paint (you can even use a different color). The main problem in the process of deciding how to update painted interior doors is high-quality painting. Naturally, you won’t be able to achieve the same results as at the factory, but you can get as close to their result as possible - the main thing is not to rush and apply the paint in thin layers. Dust protection is also very important, since dust and small debris stick to fresh paint quite easily.

You can see similar options for updating an interior door in this video.

Unfortunately, there are no other methods of partial restoration today - even the global technology for restoring an old door is based on these principles. To be precise, this is the mechanical removal of minor damage, filling of large potholes and application of a new decorative coating. In this way, a door, especially a wooden one, can be made almost indistinguishable from a new one.

Advice from the experts

When you decide to do something like this for the first time, you cannot rule out making mistakes. Often they are related to the choice of suitable material. Recommendations from experts will help prevent them:

The color of the door block trim is selected to match the interior of the room

A low price indicates the poor quality of the laminate, even if it is high-end.

How to update an old interior door with your own hands: home “lamination”

This, of course, is not factory lamination, and you cannot count on a long service life with this method of solving the question of how to update an interior door, but it allows you to give the doors an excellent appearance that will last for several years. In general, the option is cheap, but not cheerful - the end result looks quite elegant, especially if you put in maximum effort during the work process. This method consists of simply gluing doors with a film on a self-adhesive base. Despite the apparent simplicity of the work, this is not a simple matter and requires knowledge of certain subtleties and nuances. To make it easier to understand how this process is carried out, let’s consider it point by point - from “A” to “Z”.

1. Preparation of doors. Whatever one may say, it is also impossible to do without mechanical treatment - the tasks of this stage of work include eliminating all kinds of sagging from old paint, small potholes and scratches. It should be understood that the film is a thin thing, and when gluing it completely repeats the entire surface topography. If you want to get really beautiful doors, you cannot avoid the mechanical processing stage.
2. When the canvas has been properly sanded (you don’t have to completely remove the paint from it, it’s even better not to remove it completely, since the film will stick to it better), the surface of the doors will need to be cleaned of dust and degreased, and only after that can you begin the actual home process. laminating" doors.

Finishing doorway slopes with laminate

To complete the design solution and decorate the door structure, the door slopes are also decorated with laminate.

Finishing door slopes

Before decorating the slopes, the door frame should be sealed on both sides. Without this condition, even high-quality laminate will not retain heat in the house. To seal the door frame, polyurethane foam or cement mortar on an adhesive base is used.

Technology and stages of finishing door slopes:

• For facing slopes, the same type and color of laminate is used or a different color is selected, but with the condition that it matches the door.
• After sealing the seams of the door frame, cut off the remaining foam.
• The shape of the door slopes is determined.
• Installation of laminate strips is carried out both along slopes and across.
• Depending on the chosen mounting method, the starting panels are installed. When the door slopes are parallel, the slats are installed with the same thickness. If the laminate is installed at an angle, the strip next to the door is made wider, and the one located near the corner is narrower.
• The load-bearing panels are attached to the wall using dowels. The rest are done using glue or self-tapping screws.
• If you use self-tapping screws, you need to decorate their caps with special plugs to match the tone of the laminate.
• The side panels and corners are attached using the same principle.
• All seams are sealed with silicone.

The frame method of cladding door slopes will make them perfectly smooth.

Laminated door with slopes

To summarize, we can say that laminate is an excellent facing material for both wooden and metal doors. This is a durable finishing material with good heat and sound insulation. You can cover doors with laminate yourself, following the instructions for working with laminate and the recommendations of specialists.

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Other materials for decorating doors

Metal structures can also be refined using other products. Let's see what to cover the front door with if for some reason you don't like laminate. Laminated, veneered or simply painted MDF is popular. Wood-fiber products coated with a special film or veneer are suitable for interior and exterior decoration. But painted MDF is best used exclusively for decorating doors from the inside, since its strength is not high enough. Laminated panels have a beautiful appearance and reasonable cost.

Laminated MDF panels

Prices for veneered products are higher. The cheapest material is MDF with birch veneer. For luxury finishes, panels made of mahogany, oak, beech and exotic wood are usually used.

Veneered MDF is available in the form of strips. They need to be glued to the canvas. This process does not cause problems, since the strips in question have glue on their back side, which is covered with a protective paper layer. You need to remove it from each product one by one and apply the MDF to the canvas, ironing it with a hot iron through thin fabric or thick paper. Important! Pasting should begin from the middle of the door. First, draw a vertical center line on the structure, and then attach strips to the left and right of it.

Many craftsmen decorate the entrance to their home with wooden paneling. Such products have different prices, depending on the type of wood from which they are made. The lining is attached not to the iron door itself, but to a frame pre-assembled for these purposes. It is made from thin strips (they are fixed to the canvas with metal screws). The lining can be placed on the structure at different angles, painted in any color, and covered with carvings. If you wish, using such material you can easily make a unique door with your own hands.

Reviews

Sergey Zatsepin, 27 years old The front door was sheathed with laminated boards 3 years ago. It is made of solid wood, so no additional insulation was installed. I attached the cladding directly to the sash without creating a frame. I placed it completely on glue and secured it at the edges with self-tapping screws. I painted over the hats. Oleg Petrishin, 39 years old Last year in the fall, I covered a metal door with laminate slabs. Expanded polystyrene was used as insulation. Heat loss has decreased, good sound insulation. The slopes were also finished with boards. I am satisfied with my work and recommend this method to others.