DIY Why Spend More: Old door turned into corner shelf

You've probably seen these all over. I can't believe how popular they are! I normally see them for over $100 so here's your chance to make your own and customize it for much, much less. I actually spent $0 on this because I used up what we had on hand. If you have to go out and buy everything, I think you should easily be able to make it for less than $50.

This was an original door in the house that I grew up in. My parents kept it after they remodeled. I'm glad they did. It's a very nice, solid wood door with a porcelain knob. You should be able to find old doors on Craigslist or places like EcoStore (they have a ton!) or Habitat for Humanity Restore. Make sure you buy a solid wood door. The cheap, hollow ones won't work!

Backside of the door

Measure the door and divide by two to find the middle. Measure the thickness of the door. Subtract that thickness from the middle which will tell you where to make your cut. You do not want to cut in the middle because you need to figure for one piece going on top of the other. Did that make any sense at all?! You'll want a table saw to make the cut.

My husband originally tried corner braces to put the pieces together. Seems logical, right? Don't do this. It left the piece way too wiggly.

Instead you should use lag screws. These are 3.25". Use an impact driver to drive them in.

Whala. I should have sanded after this, but totally spaced-oops.

I painted the piece before putting the shelves in and I'm glad I did. It can be annoying to paint in corners and I usually end up with runs. By painting before the shelves, I didn't have to worry about jamming paint into crevices. I forgot to take pictures of my husband cutting the shelves and nailing them in (sorry). We used white pine for the shelves which is cheap. You'll need to decide if you want the shelves to extend all the way to the front or if you want to leave an inch which is what we did. Measure from one side to the other and then from front to back on each side so that you know what size to cut your shelves. To nail the shelves in, we found that a Brad Nailer with 2" nails worked perfectly.

I gave the piece two more coats of paint. I used Heron Plume from Sherwin Williams. It's the same color as our trim in the basement. We put the shelf at the bottom of the basement stairs on the landing. My husband secured it to the wall with a 3" construction screw.