Attention Seeking Cuts

Make your doors go from fake and boring to just fake for the low cost of nothing

Do you have skeletons in your closet? Closet doors are great for making sure you forget they’re there.  Every morning I wake up I look at my phone to see that nobody has called from the night before.  I then sit up and look at two hollow core closet doors that are about as fake as my friends, and I decided it was time to redo my entire bedroom. This remodel would include the closet doors.  But there was no way I was going to cough up a bunch of money because, and let’s be honest here, nobody is ever going to voluntarily see the inside of my bedroom.

I had two options: I could paint them, or build new ones from real wood. But then I realized that if I can hide this hollow feeling inside, so can my doors…

My plan was to give the appearance of aged boards attached together, much like those farmhouse doors, or a sad old married couple. I decided to run the doors over my table saw, making very shallow cuts to give the appearance of edges between boards. I had an extra door from the same material that I had from a past project, in which I demolished a closet so small you couldn’t even hide a child in there. I made a sample piece out of this door.

I promise those claw marks in the door trim are from my dog locked in my room, and not from said child locked in my room.

What’s Inside a “hollow” Door?

Hollow core doors are built from outer rails (horizontal strips) and stiles (vertical strips) with blocking in the middle. The outsides are thin sheets of cheap wood with a very thin layer of veneer on top. This saves on cost and helps prevent warping. However it’s cheap as hell and if you had any class you would get solid doors. I admit I have zero class so I’m gonna keep them.

Remove the Doors

My first step was to play Eminem on repeat while I cleaned out my closet. I then removed the doors and hardware. I planned to reuse the hardware and spray paint the handles black.

Superficial Cutting

In order to get the look of multiple boards, I ran each door over my table saw.  I set the saw blade to only go 1/16” deep so as not to cut through the veneer.  My doors were 36” wide so I spaced each cut 4” apart to make it look it look like the doors were built from nine separate 4” boards. 

At this point if you are someone who has at least one friend, I would recommend having them help you. But as I walk this world alone, I had to handle the 7’ by 3’ door myself as I ran it across the table saw. Was it safe? No. Did I care? Not really. The worst that could happen is that the saw grabs the door and throws it back into my already messed up face. I’ll take the risk, thank you very much.

This is what each door looked like after making the cuts.

Remember: Cutting too deep will ruin your day but shallow cuts demand attention.

Finishing Techniques

Seeing as I wanted the doors to look like aged wood, I then grabbed a handful of rocks that I keep around to throw at kids when they’re being too loud. I placed these rocks on the door surface and used a 2x4 to press down while rolling them around, so that they would create deep scratches in the surface.

In hindsight, I don’t think I went deep enough. Coincidentally, this is also what ended my last relationship.

After this, I went over the surface with a sander using 80 grit sandpaper. I just wanted to scuff the finish so that the paint would adhere. After sanding I put on a light coat of gray paint. I’ll get to why I did this in a minute.

Once the paint dried, I then put on a coat of white paint. This is what the door looked like.

Once that paint dried, I then put 120 grit sandpaper on a sanding block and broke all the rules of sanding. I went with the grain, across the grain, dug in the corner of the block to get deep, and made sure I sanded very unevenly.

Why the base coat of gray paint?

As I sanded through the white paint, I found the gray tint to make the wood look like it was aged. It also added a depth to the finish.

I Fucked Up

After sanding I added a coat of water-based polycrylic to protect the finish. I found that it added a shitty amber tone to the white paint. After I added this to my long list of life failures, I went back and removed the polycrylic with sandpaper. Note to self, never put a clear coat over white paint if you don’t want the paint looking like somebody peed on it.

Ready to Hang

And then they were complete. I put the handles, now black, back on the doors and put them in their tracks.

And the backsides?

I only did one side of the doors. This was mainly because I wasn’t sure how they’d turn out or that I was going to get sick of them like every relationship I’ve ever had. So I left the backsides in their original style so that I could always flip them and pretend this whole thing never happened. So if you’re like me and you fuck up a lot, you may want to consider this as a back up plan.

Special Thanks…

To Squarespace. This was my first ever blog post and it took me a solid 3 hours. I want to thank Squarespace for deleting my first rendition. Squarespace decided that no matter how much effort I put into my passion, I should just stop with this fantasy and end it already. Although I realize that Squarespace was just looking out for me and found it to be in my best interest to never blog, I’m gonna do it anyways.