Door project from hell

The doors in our home are hollow-core, plain jane, flat, cheap, and complete with ugly gold-colored handles.  Pinterest sucked me in, and showed me how you can simply, cheaply, and easily add character to those doors by adding picture-frame molding and a new doorknob. Hmmm...the online Pinterest instructions seemed to imply that an inexperienced but ambitious DIYer like myself could handle the job.  

BEFORE (this is a picture of my bedroom door. The door I rehabbed was the powder room door, but looked the same as this one (but more beat up). I just forgot to take a BEFORE picture!)

I learned a great deal while undertaking this project.  What did I learn?

1. Pinterest and the some of the people that post on this site lie. They may show 3 easy steps, but 

     they neglect to show the 120 steps in between those 3 easy steps.  

2. Employees at Lowes may know a ton, or they may know very little. It's the luck of the draw my 

    friends, and I struck out almost each and every time.  (This was most evident when the adhesive-

    specialist I was referred to suggested I affix my molding to the door using double sided-tape. 

    Really?)

3. Some products that you buy have NO installation information, recommendations, or tips. Even the 

   company that supposedly manufactures the product does not exist as far as the internet is concerned 4. You learn a lot from your mistakes. Like - never buy Loctite Construction grade adhesive. Ever. It can supposedly adhere a grown man to the ceiling, but moulding to a door? Forget about it.  

5. You get a lot of conflicting advice - and this is from people that know DIY projects and do them regularly in their own homes. 

DURING

It's super fun after spending 3 days measuring, gluing, and weighting your molding, only to have them pop right off, leaving a huge mess and more work in their wake. 

Weighting down my moulding. I learned they must be weighted evenly or the sides fight eachother and one side pops up, even with "good" adhesive. Small trip nails turned out to be a necessity, eventhough 2 people strongly suggested I NOT use them (...these goes that conflicting advice again.)

Finally getting somewhere... 

Finished - complete with new black doorknob.  From afar, I love it! Up close, the paint job looks like complete crap.  Oh well... maybe we'll tackle fixing that... another day.