Breathe New Life Into An Old Door With A Creative DIY Storage Idea

In smaller spaces, every extra bit of storage is a tremendous bonus. This is particularly true for areas like craft rooms, workshops, and art studios, where the supplies you need to get creative can also take up a lot of room. Great storage means that everything is available at a glance, with the chaos of clutter often proving a hindrance to productivity and creativity. YouTube DIYer Evan Monsma recently demonstrated how he repurposed an old charming wooden door to create compact and useful storage for spray paint in his workshop. This hack not only looks beautiful, but provides extra home storage in an uncommon place.

Old doors often have much more character than today's generic hollow ones. You can find them at places like flea markets, salvage shops, and thrift or antique stores. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are also perfect for finding old doors that have been removed by homeowners during renovation. You may even have one laying around the house from a past remodel. These doors are usually made of sturdy wood with beautiful hardware that just needs a little love to become a stunning and functional storage piece.

Begin by removing the old door's existing hardware, modifying it to fit the doorway by adding extra scrap wood segments at the bottom and top. Once the additions are made, sand down the finish on the door, removing some of the paint and allowing various older layers to show through. While the YouTube DIYer leaves the overall finish in its rustic state, you can use this as an opportunity to re-stain the door completely or add some paint. Clean up the old hardware, including hinges and knobs. Then, build L-shaped shelves from other bits of scrap wood; these rest snuggly against the door and hold the spray paints. You can then use more scrap wood for end caps to keep the cans in place. Once the shelves are attached with long screws, hang the door on the hinges from the previous door. 

This DIY offers a genius craft room organization hack for paint, yarn, or other supplies that will fit on the slender shelves. Or, you can use it as an addition to a playroom for children's book storage. It's also a great way to use repurposed doors in your home. You can use it to create a plant door, to add some extra storage to your bathroom or kitchen pantry, or to even close off an unused doorway and make it a space for storage.