Build Your Own Closet Doors

Build Your Own Closet Doors – HELLO beautiful people! Finally this year was a LOT of heat and rain! It seems to be more rain than any other year since we moved to Idaho. It doesn’t bother me though! I love rain and enjoy it😍😊. Luckily, this wave of warm weather allowed me to make some new closet doors.

FINE! Closet doors! First, I confess that I went to the home warehouse to buy doors. I was thinking of buying plain panels and maybe dressing them up a bit. However, I didn’t find one that fit my budget and they didn’t have any simple ones.

Build Your Own Closet Doors

When I talk about budget, let’s not forget that Tony (husband) didn’t want to start with the doors. His closet idea is an open concept where clothes are visible and easier to access. In other words, I guess I should say there was no budget at all! 😆LOL!

Custom Interior Glass Doors And Partitions

Don’t get me wrong, I love having easy access to everything, but who ever said they love having their ugly closet always 100% visible! 😫 NOT ME!

Somewhere deep down I knew that I would need to make my own cabinet doors! HOW? I wasn’t sure yet!

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon these 2x2s that I had an idea. The idea was to build a frame for each door panel and I could either cut plywood to fill in the centers or use fabric to fill in the centers. It sounded easy enough to do it yourself. I’m saying this because I knew Tony wouldn’t be much help with this project at all. He helped a lot of people with the chest of drawers, which caused him to fall behind on work, so I knew he needed to catch up. He also agreed to let me make them if I did it myself. HAHA😂 BOY OH BOY. Let’s just say it was a challenge from the start!

If you can get past this point, than your past is the hardest part! I swear it took me all day to figure it out! (FYI – I suck at numbers)

Custom Closet Doors

Because I wanted to make bi-fold doors, I knew it would be more difficult than sliding doors. You have to take into account the door hinges and just the space needed to fold them. Apparently I couldn’t find a good example on the web of how to properly size panels, which made me a little frustrated. My biggest question to start with was… HOW MUCH SPACE SHOULD I LEAVE BETWEEN EACH PANEL? I ended up calling my father. During his life he built several houses, I thought he knew something. His answer was 1/4″ inch. BINGO! I was on a roll again!

Here’s what I came up with. The final dimensions of each door were to be 78 inches high by 17 inches wide. (I would make a total of 4 doors to enter my closet)

Okay, here’s how I did it! Take the width of your closet doorway and divide by 4. Then subtract 1/2″ from the width of each panel and 3/4″ from the bottom. (the reason I say 3/4 from the bottom is because I made it 1/2 inch shorter than my closet opening door and it was still too big)

(ok, ok… so this will give you 1/4″ of space between each panel (1/2″ divided by two equals 1/4″) and shortening them by 3/4″ will give you enough space above and below your closet doors to open and close)

Diy Closet Organization Ideas

Each panel consists of 4 parts called top layer and bottom layer. They are connected together to create one panel. The reason for using two layers is so that you can screw the panels together from the top. (this method allows for more screws and seems to be more durable)

I made a video of the assembly of the parts (scroll down to watch the video). That’s pretty much it for these DIY cabinet doors! If you understand this, this was the hardest part for me.

Even though I chose 2″x2″ to work with, we split them in half to create the top and bottom layers for our panels. This requires a table saw, which I’m sure not everyone has. In fact I rarely ever use ours! It’s the only thing Tony agreed to help me with. HOORAY! So glad he did because I’m deathly afraid of our table saw. This thing doesn’t love me! HAHA😂! We have a past!

The solution to the NO TABLE SAW situation would be to use a 1″ x 2″ from a home warehouse. They are thin enough already and once layered they will be the perfect thickness to create a solid panel. Which makes me wonder why I didn’t use them in the first place. 🙈LOL! (I secretly wanted Tony to be part of this project 😆shhh don’t tell him)

How To: Build Your Own Inexpensive Closet Doors!

Home Depot can really cut your wood to size. (I’m not sure if they have a table saw to split it so it will only work with 1″ x 2″)

If you bring your plans and just have a bunch of sizes, you can save tons of time by cutting all of your DIY cabinet door pieces this way.

Then just load it into your car and when you get home, all you have to do is assemble all the parts. Just make sure you have the correct dimensions. You don’t want to spend all that money on wood you can’t use.

(also make sure you have a few extra pieces, because sometimes the wood can split or have knots)

How To Make Diy Bifold Doors — The Modern Renovator

AMAZING!! AHA!! That’s all it cost me for all 4 closet door panels! (This does not include the double door hardware, which cost about another $40.)

I won’t lie, this is a labor intensive project. Although it probably had a lot to do with me to understand things. 😑LOL!

Cutting and assembling the panels took several hours. Quite a short time. Then the addition and dyeing of the fabric was about 3-4 hours. I spread this project over several days.

(make sure to choose the straightest wood possible. Also plan to make the doors as soon as you buy the wood as it can warp if you leave it for a while…mine started warping after 4 days and it’s not very humid in Idaho at all )

The Different Types Of Closet Doors And Which Ones You Should Get

Okay, here’s a little snippet showing what the panel looks like in close-up with the top and bottom layers. (previously bolted)

This is the wood stain I decided to use, and JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! How very bad! First, let me say that I decided to stain my wood because I wanted an even look under the burlap. I was afraid that because some parts of the wood looked darker than others, they might be visible under the burlap. Now that I think about it, I sincerely regret using this material. I would just use thinned acrylic paint. We have been airing in our autoport for 2 weeks, but it still stinks. It definitely fades, but for some reason it seems to me that it will always stink a little.

I should note that I did not apply varnish over the stain at all. Not sure if this will affect the smell in any way. (update: the smell faded after about 3 weeks. I was already starting to think these DIY cabinet doors would be a flop)

When I applied the paint, I did not let it sit for a long time. I almost wiped it off as soon as I put it on.

A Step By Step Guide To Diy Walk In Closet

Before proceeding with these closet doors, I was very inspired by rattan! If you’ve never heard of it, it looks a lot like a reed web! When I thought about buying rattan or cane webbing, I found it cost about $7 per square foot! Quite expensive and again not in my budget! That’s when I decided burlap was the way to go because it has the perfect texture and only about $3 a yard. I decided to color it because it was too light and more yellow than the reed web. I used acrylic paint which I mixed with water and applied with a brush. (folk latte and titanium white) After adding water, the mixture was quite diluted. Don’t forget to take paint samples before you dye the whole burlap. Also keep in mind that after drying, it will become a few tones darker. That’s why my mixture looks very light and milky.

To get the perfect faux rattan look, I know my paint mix looked very light and milky, and it looked like it wouldn’t make a huge difference to burlap, but it does! Believe me! I went through a lot of sample tests before settling on this milk color mix. Here is a snippet showing the color difference.

(burlap in the upper right corner of the photo is colored compared to

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