It's Great To Be Home

A Tale Of Two Doors

August 31, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 6 Comments

I’m a total sucker for repurposing and salvaging old materials (like the crafty craft cabinet I told you all about here), so when Tonya wrote in about the DIY projects she conquered with a pair of old doors I was hooked from the start.

It all started when Tonya switched out the boring old double doors to her office with some gorgeous new French doors:

Tonya really wanted an L-shaped desk for the office, but everything she could find was way more expensive than she wanted. So, she took matters into her own hands and created a huge, functional (and affordable) L-shaped desk out of . . . you guessed it . . . the original doors to the office!

Here’s what Tonya did and how she did it:

Materials – $80 total:

~ 2 doors (free with the house)

~ 2 filing cabinets (1 already on hand, another from Wal-Mart for $30)

~ 4 table legs from Lowe’s ($30 total)

~ black lacquer spray paint ($10)

~ heavy duty double stick tape

~ 3 table leg brackets ($8 total)

How-to:

1. Those old doors were spray painted a shiny black and became the work surface for the new desk.

2. The doors were laid in an L-shape, with the top of one door overlapping the other door. Table legs supported one end of each door, and the filing cabinets held up the other ends – and the filing cabinets were secured to the doors with that double stick tape!!

3. Tonya used the old doorknob holes to her advantage, utilizing one hole to corral all the computer cords – the other hole was filled with a pencil holder and functioned as a built-in pen and pencil holder!

After Tonya got a few years of enjoyment out of her desk, she decided to sell her house – and she was able to get yet another use out of her old doors! She turned the office into this gorgeous dining room . . .

. . . and made a kitchen table on the fly by cutting one of the old doors in half, adding a fourth leg, and draping the door with pretty material – voila, instant kitchen table!

Talk about getting some serious use out of two old doors! I have a few old doors lying around and now I’m just dying to make a desk of my very own! Have you guys ever made something cool out of old doors?

Want to see your DIY project or renovation featured on IGTBH? Just send me an email at itsgreattobehome@yahoo.com and I’ll hook you up!

And don’t forget, the blog party for Inspiration Tuesday starts tonight at 10:00 p.m.!!! Get your posts ready, grab the IGTBH button, and get ready to party!!

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!!