Serving Hatch

house_refurbisher

HELP!
I have a serving hatch which I do not like at all, it looks really dated - its plain wood which is painted white. I would really like to board it up or create a doorway but this would be too costly & create other jobs - new flooring etc.
Please can someone suggest how to update it so it doesnt look so outdated & horrid?

andrew-b

With our one that we removed the old louvre doors and architraves. The existing frame wasn't squared up properly so we lined the bottom and sides of the frame in MDF. We then used 'ogee' style MDF architrave to cover the edge of the frame and frame lining - plain architrave wouldn't have been wide enough. On the dining area side we put the architrave around all 4 sides of the frame. On the kitchen side we put architrave around the top and sides but as the bottom of the frame was only about a centimetre higher than the worktop we fitted a small wooden bead to make up the difference.
We made a pair of doors (cut a sheet of mdf to fill the frame - allowing a gap around it - then cut in half) and attached using flush-fitting hinges.
Next we filled all the joints and nail holes with filler before painting.
To stop the doors opening the wrong way we used magnetic catches. For handles we got 4 small antique-effect metal kitchen door knobs from B&Q . To attach the door knobs we bought a long length of machine thread bolt of suitable size and cut to length so that the bolt went through a hole drilled in each door with knobs screwed on either side.

Hope that helps

Andy