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Sliding Closet Door Makeover

August 23, 2012 in Bedrooms, Building and Repurposing, Crashing at Christy's

Are you watching Big Brother right now? I am! It’s my guilty pleasure. Any chance you caught the All-Stars season years ago with Chill Town? – oh how I miss them….

Anywho… so earlier this week my rockin-DIY-sister and I had a conversation…

Dana: Rinnnnng rinnnnng
Christy: Hello?
Dana: Hey Christy – it’s Dana! I was just thinking – how come we’ve never blogged about your closet doors?
Christy: Umm We haven’t?
Dana: <doing frantic google search of her own blog> Nope, nada. FAIL.

Without further ado… check out one of the genius DIY upgrades my sister undertook in her home. This girl’s handy I tell ya…

Hi again, Crafted Niche followers!!! This time I’d like to share a project that was no idea of mine, but the project was super easy and made a HUGE difference in the look of my bedrooms. So, maybe if you’ve been toying with the idea of doing this, you can now have the courage to do so.

When I moved into my house, the bedrooms were graced with hollow-core, sliding doors. They were an orangey stained wood and really didn’t go well with my white trim. (Dana Sidenote: That’s an understatement. Those things were badddd. Sorry Christy… just puttin’ it out there!) So, I knew I at least wanted to paint them. Dana showed me a link of a closet door redo that she thought would work perfectly. So, why not??

I’m not going to give you an in-depth tutorial as Frugalicious already does that for you in the link above. But, I basically followed her instructions except I didn’t use liquid nails. The trim I used is the plastic trim and there is no warp to it and the nails have done a great job holding the trim on. With the caulked edges, I’ve never had any problem with the trim coming up.

So, here’s what I had to work with. Pretty, right??

Confession… that’s a closet door that I have STILL not done yet. I forgot to take a before picture of the other closets, so luckily I had one set that hadn’t been refinished. Lucky procrastination! I sanded the doors down on the outside only (since only those who would hide in a closet would see the backside of the doors). Wiped ‘em down with a damp rag and got to work.

I primed the door first and then put my wallpaper on. I didn’t use extra wallpaper paste. This wallpaper is from Lowe’s and is the paintable beadboard-look wallpaper. I had to trim the width a bit for one of my narrower door closets.

Then, I hung the trim up. I didn’t paint with the semi-gloss paint first. Looking back, that would probably have been a much easier method. That way you could just roll it on. Also, you have to find a fairly thin trim. Anything too thick will rub when the closets try to slide back and forth.

This project was from waaaaay back in the day (approx. 4 years ago) when I didn’t have a nail gun or a compound miter saw. So, I had to nail with a hammer and cut the trim with a miter box. This project is so easy, that it didn’t hold me back one bit. So, no excuses!

So the super dramatic Before and After?

The beadboard texture is very subtle and I like it that way. The only final upgrade I did to these was to change out the finger-slide-hole-thingies. (Dana: Nice technical term, Christy. Hehe) I had originally just painted them, but they looked “painted”. So, I spent the whopping $3 or so and got brushed nickel. I also put felt pads on the back so that when the front door moved from side to side, it wouldn’t rub the trim on the back door.

See, super easy! Now go update those old closet doors!!!

- Christy

Told you! Aren’t those doors brilliant?! They look so nice in person. Huge kudos to Christy for tackling this project so early on in her DIY endeavors. Atta girl!

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Ok… stop scrolling back up to look in horror. Please. Stop! I know… it’s bad. REALLY bad. I am addicted to hats and tote bags…. and apparently sweat shirts. My shelf runneth over. I took one glance at that side wall on the left and knew exactly what I needed to do. Take advantage of all that empty space! Get the mess up off the floor and on the wall.

You can see that I already had a couple rows of small nails on the wall to hang my hats on. I just hated the thought of putting a bunch of hooks and nails in the wall. Is that strange? BUT…. why not PEGBOARD?!

Using 2″ screws I mounted a couple furring strips to the wall (through the studs) and then attached a piece of pegboard with a couple more screws. Tuhdah! …and it just so happens I have about 1.4 million peg hooks in my shed. Seriously people… that shed is HUGE and the man that lived here before me went completely overboard with pegs and screws into the wall for hanging things on. Insane. (…and when I say the shed is huge… I mean HUGE. It has glass french doors, a couple windows, fully insulated and a storage loft. A person could live in there easily.)

Believe it or not… this isn’t all of them. There are still PLENTY hanging on the walls above my workbench. Out. Of. Control. I sorted them by size and then brought a couple piles inside to start organizing!

…and after lots of reworking, this is what I had:

It’s so hard to get a good picture in this closet. I had to scrunch up against the wall to try to get a decent view of the pegboard wall. Say hi to Quinn in the bottom of that pic above! As soon as I let her in the room she went in that closet to sniff around on the floor. Does that mean she’d never seen the floor before? Quite possible…. it’s typically covered in tote bags. :-/ (Side note – now she likes to sleep on the floor in that closet pretty often. haha)

I decided to give my other closet the same treatment!

It’s a teeny tiny walk-in closet and this wall was completely unused. Why not?! You know the drill…. find the studs… mount the furring strips… attach the pegboard. Rinse and repeat.

Yep, I decided to move the hats to this closet. It left more room for my purses, wristlets, clutches, totes, etc in the other closet and brought them closer to the bathroom where I actually get ready and get dressed. Win-win!

By no means would I consider my closet completely de-cluttered. The shelves are still over-stuffed, but I’ll get to that…. baby steps, people! Baby steps!

Tomorrow I’ll show you the greatest thing that’s ever happened to my closet. Seriously – I LUV it. If you don’t already have some, do yourself a favor and add wire hangers to your shopping list. You’re going to want them after you see what I found on Pinterest!

Anyone else dying to decorate for Christmas? I AM!!! I told myself I had to wait until after Thanksgiving to put up decorations. We’ll see if I make it.