Hollow Core Door | It's Great To Be Home

Make A Storage Unit From Salvaged Materials. Step 3: Grab The Glue And Screws!

June 4, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 12 Comments

Now that we’ve got the cabinets and door sliced, diced and perfectly painted, it’s time to assemble everything into one snazzy, salvaged storage unit!!

Here’s all you’ll need to turn two upper cabinets and a hollow core door into a storage unit:

~ 4 L-brackets and corresponding screws

~ 4 drywall anchors (optional)

~ Gorilla Glue (or other wood glue)

~ drill

~ painter’s tape

~ 4 cabinet knobs of your choosing

~ screwdriver

1. Assume the position. Got that perfect spot picked out for your storage unit? Mine was a blank wall in my craft room that was just begging for some extra storage, and I lined the cabinets up against the wall.

Chances are that one of your cabinets will lean out further than the other one (like mine, above) – this is no problemo. Just wiggle them around until the fronts of the cabinets are flush and level, then put a few screws through the interior walls of the cabinets (using your trusty drill) so that the two sides of the cabinet are screwed together. This will keep them flush and perfect for all eternity.

2. Batten down the hatches. Now you’re ready to attach your cabinets to the wall. This is an important step, because you don’t want your storage unit to come crashing down the second that you put something in it – that would be pretty uncool. All you need is a few L-brackets and screws (and drywall anchors if you want, which will make your cabinet less likely to pull out from the wall). These are what I used (apparently L-brackets are also called corner braces – who knew?):

I put one L-bracket in the outer corners of each cabinet – just attach the L-bracket to the underside of the top of the cabinet with a few screws. I was driving myself crazy trying to hold the L-bracket in place with one hand and the screw with the other hand and then trying to screw in the screw – that’s for the birds. Here’s a little tip – just use some painter’s tape or masking tape and tape those little brackets to your cabinet and to the wall – voila! No more pulling your hair out while you’re trying to screw the screws in!

Here’s another little tip. If you’re going to have anything on top of your cabinet that has cords, make sure that you leave a little space behind your cabinets so that the cords can sneak through. I knew that I was going to have a TV on top of my cabinet, so I used a screwdriver to hold the cabinets out from the wall when I was placing the L-brackets. Easy!

3. Put a lid on it. Here’s the fun part, the part where your storage unit is actually going to start looking like a storage unit instead of just some random cabinets and a door. All you need to do is grab your Gorilla Glue, make some squiggles on the top of your cabinets and smush the door down on top. After you make sure everything is centered and just where you want it, grab some heavy stuff and put it on top for about an hour.

Note: If you’re going to have cords behind the unit, you might want to make a little cut-out on the back side of the door that you can sneak your cords through. To make the cut-out in my door, I just figured out where I wanted the cords to come through, made two little inch-long cuts with my hand saw, scored the wood with a utility knife, and then whacked away at it with a hammer until the pieces broke off. One piece was a little pesky, so I went after it with a pair of pliers and it finally submitted. Victory!

4. Get a handle on things. While the glue on your new countertop is drying, it’s the perfect time to put some new knobs on your storage unit. I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted the new knobs, so I just took a look at the knobs on our kitchen cabinets and copied the placement. I figured out that the knobs should be 1 inch below the frame of the cabinet door, in the middle of the side piece.

Then I just measured down, made a little dot with a pen, and made a little hole with my trusty drill using a drill bit that was about the same size as the screws that came with the new knobs.

Final tip of the day – put a little painter’s tape on the back side of the cabinet door where you’re going to be drilling – that will prevent the wood from splintering and make your drill hole look more like Picture 1 than Picture 2.

Yay, now your storage unit is ALMOST ready to go!! Stay tuned to find out how to make that snazzy, custom countertop . . .

Make A Storage Unit From Salvaged Materials. Step 2: Bust Out The Hand Saw

June 2, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 5 Comments

Hold on to your paint brushes – I’m back with another step in my tutorial for creating a custom storage unit out of salvaged cabinetry!

This step involves a hand saw, so get excited!

So far, we’ve painted our salvaged cabinetry and now we’re ready to create a countertop for our storage unit. The hubby and I salvaged a bunch of hollow core doors from our house during our remodel - I’ve had big plans for them for awhile, and I was super excited to finally get to put one of those babies into action with this storage unit project.

Here’s what you’ll need to turn a hollow core door into the perfect countertop for your storage unit:

~ 1 hollow core door

~ hand saw

~ painter’s tape or masking tape

~ Sharpie

~ screwdriver

~ measuring tape

~ sawhorses or something you can rest the door on

1. Measure up. Unless you have freakishly deep lower cabinets, you’ll need to cut down your door so that you only have a small lip for your countertop. Just place the door on top of the cabinets and play around with the amount of overhang that you have until it looks right – I went with about a 3 inch lip on mine (for a total counter depth of about 16 inches) so that I would have room on top of my cabinets to actually work on projects, display larger items, etc.

2. Tape it up. Once you know how large your countertop is going to be, use painter’s tape or masking tape to mark your “cut line.” Make sure to tape around both sides of the door, and draw a center line down the tape with your Sharpie (you can draw the line on one side only). There are two reasons for taping the door – first, it clearly marks the line that you’re going to cut with your hand saw and, second, it helps keep the wood from splintering while you’re cutting. It’s not a perfect fix for splintering, but it definitely helps.

3. Remove the excess. Since this hollow core door was actually hung in our house, it had a door knob and hinges that needed to be removed. However, if you’re only using part of the door you can get away with only removing the door knob or the hinges – just use your screwdriver to take off whichever hardware is on the side of the door that you’re using. In my case, I just had to remove the hinges.

4. Go to town. Bust out that handsaw!! In a perfect, responsible world, you’ll place your door on two saw horses so that everything is stable and safe while you’re making your cut with the handsaw. I didn’t have saw horses – while I definitely do not recommend trying this at home (safety first!!), I just propped my door up against a wheelbarrow that we had in our garage and started sawing away.

At this point, you’ll definitely be glad that you have a hollow core door rather than a solid core door. As you can see from the picture above, the majority of the hollow core door is just a wood veneer and cardboard spacers – the only real wood are two pieces of 2 x 4 at the top and bottom of the door. I had a tough time cutting through the wood at the top and bottom of the door, but the middle part of the door was relatively easy to cut through – but don’t get me wrong, my wimpy bicep was definitely screaming the next day!

5. Paint’er up. Your door is almost ready! Now just prime and paint the areas that will be exposed, like the sides and underside of the lip. You don’t need to paint the whole underside or the top, since the cabinets will be covering most of the underside and our awesome custom treatment will be covering the top.

Stay tuned to see how this salvaged storage unit all comes together!!

Make A Storage Unit From Salvaged Materials. Step 1: Painting

June 1, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 34 Comments

Would you ever think that these dreary cabinets:

could turn into this?

It just goes to show you that with a little imagination and inspiration, you can turn salvaged materials into something fun, useful and totally unique.

Let me fill you in on the details. As you already know, we completely gutted and remodeled our house from top to bottom. During demo, we made sure to save as many cabinets, doors and random (but potentially useful) things as we could so that we could reuse, recycle or repurpose the salvaged materials instead of just throwing them away. These solid oak upper cabinets from the den were two of the pieces that were able to be saved:

Pretty uninspiring, right? (And please avert your eyes from the disaster that is our garage).

We had two of these babies, so I schemed up a plan to turn these upper cabinets into a single base cabinet unit for my craft room. There were a few steps in these cabinets’ metamorphosis that I’ll fill you in on over the next few days, but first here’s a quick painting tutorial on how the cabinets went from dark and dated to fun and fresh.

This is all you’ll need to get started painting your salvaged cabinets (or any other wood furniture):

~ salvaged cabinets

~ medium grit sandpaper

~ 1 quart oil-based primer, like Kilz

~ 1 quart latex paint, color of your choosing

~ water-based polyurethane, finish of your choosing (I used Minwax’s satin finish)

~ foam roller and paint tray

~ foam brush

~ wood filler

~ screwdriver, pliers and hammer

1. Remove handles and molding. Since I was going to use these upper cabinets as lower cabinets, I removed the crown molding that had been added to the top of the cabinets – it came off easily using the back of a hammer. The handles were also in a funky place for lower cabinets, so I just removed them with a screwdriver. The last step was to remove all of the nails that had been used to secure the cabinets to the wall – they were finishing nails without a head, so they pulled out easily with a pair of pliers.

2. Fill in the holes. Not surprisingly, all of the nails and handles that I removed left behind bunches of unsightly little holes. I just grabbed a tube of wood filler and crammed a bunch of filler into the holes. Don’t worry about being too tidy here because you’ll sand off the excess later on.

3. Get sandy. You’ll want to go to town on your cabinets with medium grit sandpaper to remove any slick finish from the cabinets so that your primer can easily adhere to the surface. This is also when you’ll sand off the excess wood filler for a nice, even finish.

4. Bust out the primer. Oil-based primer is just the ticket for painting wood – it’s super sticky and provides a great base for your paint. Don’t worry that it’s oil-based – latex paint can go over oil-based primer, just not oil-based paint. Funky rule, I know.

While some people swear by brushes, t when I’m applying the primer to wood I like to use a foam roller followed up with a foam brush for any tricky corners or drips. I find that brushes leave behind brush strokes that can drive you crazy, while a foam roller leaves a pretty smooth finish. Here’s what the primer looked like when I tried to use a brush that I had on hand rather than buying a foam roller:

See what I mean? It can look pretty bad without a roller.

But don’t worry about your primer being even and perfect – it won’t be and it doesn’t need to be. All you need to do is make sure to get a little primer on every surface that you’re going to paint so that the paint will stick.

5. Roll on the paint. You’re nearing the finish line at this point! My cabinets took two coats of paint, and in all honesty could probably have used a third coat (sadly, I am lazy and decided to just go with two – still looks pretty good). I chose to paint over the plastic inserts on the cabinet doors because I hated the color but liked the pattern – if I ever grow tired of the inserts, I can just remove them and add fabric, paint them in a cool mosaic pattern, etc.

6. Protect the finish. The last step in this painting project is to slap a few coats of polyurethane on the cabinets to protect the finish from nicks, water rings, or anything else that might hurt the paint. Be sure to smooth out any drips, as they will turn yellow.

See, painting furniture isn’t so hard!! Stay tuned, I’ll be filling you in over the next few days on how to create a countertop for the cabinets with a salvaged door, how to assemble your new cabinetry, and how to customize the countertop with a colorful finish.

Check out steps 2, 3 and 4 for the finished cabinet.