Rice Paper Door Repair

We have (or had) these beautiful rice paper doors in our house. Within our first year of living in Okinawa they got a few holes in them. Once Anna got on the scene the number of holes significantly increased (notice all these holes are at toddler height). I was very sad about it at first, but our friend told us they weren't too hard to fix. Scott thought we could try and fix them ourselves, although I was nervous about it. So since we are finally moving out, here is our attempt at fixing the rice paper doors. Here is a before picture of one of the doors right before we attempt a fix. So sad. The other one was actually worse.

Scott got all the materials. The roll of rice paper even had directions. We couldn't read it, but at least there were pictures.
I didn't get a lot of pictures in the middle, 'cause I was helping him do it all, but basically we had to wet the adhesive on the paper to get the old paper off. Then we put special glue and tape on the wood. Next we rolled out the rice paper, pulling it tight and smoothing it over each wood slat with a special smoothing tool.

Then Scott cut off the excess with a utility knife (that's what he's doing in this picture). And finally we let it dry. It was a little touch and go there in the middle, but Scott was very confident it would turn out well...

...and it did!!

Of course, we did all this after the kids went to bed. And I was terrified that in the one day we would be in the house with the fixed doors, the kids would somehow poke a hole in them again.

Matthew was impressed with the nice doors and we only had one frightening incident, which luckily, did not cause any damage. Phew!! The doors are back to being beautiful again! We won't be able to enjoy them, but we do have the satisfaction of knowing we fixed them ourselves. :)