Thursday, December 16, 2010

When one door closes...

Happy Thursday everyone! I hope you're having a great week and finishing up all of those holiday tasks!

When we first moved into our house, some friends were nice enough to pass along a few new white six-panel doors they had bought while renovating their house that they didn't end up needing. We were more than happy to take them off of their hands since we were rocking some sweet flat panel wood grain doors circa '78, but unfortunately they were the wrong size.

We were just about to send them to the dump, when I envisioned a new life for one of them...as a headboard! I have seen this done before and just love the idea, so I put my lova to work. He's always looking for an excuse to use his power tools anyway :)

First, we decided to even out the look of the door by cutting off the top two panels. The lucky bed receiving this brand new headboard is just a Full size, so it didn't need to be very big.



Once we cut into it, we realized the door was hollow. We obviously already knew this, but hadn't really taken it into account when we decided to saw off the ends. So we cut off a really thin piece at the very top (of the piece we had just sawed off) to glue to the new edge, covering up the hollow cave.


We ended up doing this on both sides since the bottom needed some shortening as well.


Another little obstacle we encountered was the hole for the door knob. Since we planned on making this the bottom portion of the headboard, I wasn't too worried about it. But Mr. W is a bit of a perfectionist, so he cut out a circular piece of door from the top scrap to fill it in.


Next, I sanded and painted it. I mostly just sanded the edges where we glued on the new ends to hide the seam that the glue left. These doors weren't previously painted, so two coats covered up the white just fine. However, the garage was reeeally cold when I painted, so it took a lot longer to dry. So I needed a glass of red wine to stay warm. Just a tip for all of you Northwest winter DIY'rs. 


We decided the easiest way to hang this sucker would be to treat it like a picture frame. So Nate used some tools I know not of, and put some nails in the studs behind the wall...


...and then attached some brackets to the back of the headboard...


and stuck some of these fuzzy stickers on the corners to avoid scraping up the wall.


The finished product!


I love it! It makes the room so much cozier. We still have a lot of work to do in there, the white walls are driving me loco, but this definitely warms things up.


If you don't happen to have a couple of lonely doors hanging out in your garage like we did, check out your local thrift/antique stores. I always see old doors with lots of personality at those places around here.






7 comments:

the tampiens said...

It turned out great!! Seriously, I love it! Nice work!!

Unknown said...

Love it and Love the color!

Lindsay said...

Thanks ladies!

Anonymous said...

Wow! How creative, it looks amazing!!
Have a Happy Holiday :)


~Veronica~

Lindsay said...

Thanks Veronica! Hope you guys are doing great, I miss working with you! :)

Jess @ Blonde Ponytail said...

You are CRAFTY!! It helps to have a handy hubby too! :)

Lindsay said...

Thanks, Jess! And yes it does :)