About 2 years ago, I decided to make an awesome corner shelf made from an old door courtesy of Pinterest.
They look so cool and its such a neat idea not to mention an interesting and unique piece to have.
My dad gave me a ficus tree back in my bachelorette days and he was super proud of it. So it has followed me from house to house and it has not aged gracefully. I really wanted to get rid of it and I thought a door shelf like the ones on Pinterest would be the perfect size to fill the space of the intrusive ficus in the corner of my living room.
So let’s go back two years. I’m searching for an old, solid wood door to start my project. You would think they would be easy to find seeing all of the projects people do with them, or maybe that’s why they are so scarce. Anyway, I found a nice sliding closet door at my local Habitat for Humanity. Perfect! It was already halved and hinged. I was pretty sure that would be the most difficult part, especially since I don’t own a saw and I’m scared of them. So I spray painted it a cute blue that matched my living room, at that point in time, I had yet to discover my beloved chalk paint. And there she sat, waiting in my dad’s shop for a year or more before I had my mom cut shelves for me on her saw. She’s not scared of heavy machinery and she did a great job taking square pieces of compressed wood and cutting them across diagonally to give me 4 shelves and keeping all of her appendages intact.
And then she sat again in the same spot until now. I took her home and formulated a plan for attaching the shelves. Looking at the door 2 years later, I was dissatisfied with its appearance. So I started dry brushing some bronze and a creamy yellow (that I picked out earlier that day to paint the shelves) on it until she looked nice and aged and kind of like a real door.
I painted the shelves while I waited for my husband to get home and help me with installing them. We decided to attach small pieces of wood on each side of the door to act as a lip for the shelves to rest on and then screw them into the pieces of wood from the top to secure it.
It seemed to work pretty well.
If you’re wondering why I’m using that weird scribbly frame on my photos it’s to hide my messy garage.
After that, I had my husband drill a hole in the side of the door to install a cute handle that has been waiting for 2 years to adorn this project.
In all of my excitement, I forgot to dry brush the shelves to age them so now I have to figure out how to neatly do that without messing up anything else. But until then the Lady will continue to wait. She’s very patient.
You can see my little helper on the side. He wanted to be in the picture because he “helped make it”!
Been There, DIY'D That 