DIY Closet Doors

One of the reasons we moved into a house was to have a bit more space to make stuff. Conversely, with a house comes many reasons to make things and fix various things. Thus, one of the first things we needed to do was to make doors for Carina's closet in the bedroom. Below are before and after pictures:

Before

After

The closet is not more than a rustic shelf space and a bit of space to hang clothes and the previous owners had a curtain rail extending into this area which enabled them to "close" the closet. We felt that a curtain from the ceiling this large made the room feel smaller. This left us with an open closet which is not very nice to have. My first major thing to build thus became the doors to the bedroom closet.

I thus set out to make something simple, lightweight and as quick as possible. The rest of the post will be several pictures relating the construction process.

After measuring the closet we set out to buy some wood and cloth. The wood is simple 2x4cm pine that were over 2 meters long that we bought at Bauhaus. We ordered some cheap white cloth online (with some felt to use for building a puzzle on - more about this in the future).

Wood to construct door frames

The door frames were constructed by screwing in the wood to a l-shaped metal corner joiner. Wooden beams for support and some aesthetics where added a bit lower.

Door frames after construction and sanding

I painted all the doors white with some paint left by the previous owners (I think our ceiling is painted with this).

Painted door hanging to dry

All doors painted

Spot the ferret carved into the wood.

When the cloth arrived I set out to wash, dry, measure and cut it for each frame. 

Fitting the cloth

To help with getting the cloth fitted straight and creating a hidden seam I needed something to role the edges into. Below is a simple jig to quickly cut cardboard strips of exactly the same width.

Strip cutting jig

I rolled the cloth edge twice in around the cardboard strip and stapled it into the frame. Carina was a great help here.

Fitting the cloth on a more permanent basis

Front of completed door

I decided before starting this project that I should use the lights within the closet to make the doors a bit less boring. The idea was thus to paint something on the cloth and have the back-light on to create a shadow picture. I found a picture on the interwebs that I liked adapted it for this project.

Sketch of the picture I wanted to use

Scaled up and printed

The cloth is quite transparent. I stuck the picture sections to the table and with the doors on top it was still easy to see the outline of the picture.

Sticking the picture to the table and covering with clingfilm

Gathering paint on a specialized paint holder and set to work panting each door.

Paint scooping

Palette...?

Painting on the backside of the door

First door done

Touching up some details

Painting done

The only thing left to do was to add doorknobs, hinges and magnetic latches.

Last additions

We hung the doors and reasonably happy with the result. The pine is not 100% straight but neither is the closet. The I had to make some adjustments to get everything to fit. The right side of the closet also lack a beam and this leaves a slight gap. I will add the beam to the closet in the future to make it a bit neater.

Doors with light from front

Doors with light from back

Overall the doors function as they should.

R&C

Scottish gifts

 Our first gift to our new house arrived yesterday. This was generously provided from Scotland by our sib in sib-in-law. It included a traditional dish and some traditional drink to wash it down.

Also provided was a gift for our kittens. They absolutely love the shaking mouse toy and have already removed an ear. 

Thanks sib and skoonsib,
Looking forward to your visit later this year.
R&C

Our house...

This is a short blog to show the inside of our new house in Fors, Tierp. As our previous blog outlined (see here), we had quite a busy December moving in to our new home and setting up everything. Things are getting there, slowly but surely, and the inside of our house are at least in a presentable state now :)  -- thus the three videos below. Since we are in the midst of a quite serious "downsift" of snow, I could not take the camera outside for an outside overview. But hopefully we can cover this part in the summer.

Some notes to the videos:
- Three videos; the upstairs living area, outside views from upstairs, and the downstairs basement
- Narrated in Afrikaans, sorry to the Afrikaans impaired (term stolen from my skoonsib (sister-in-law) Cindy :)
- Note pointed out by Ronnie to me, for the "extreme northern hemisphere impaired", you can actually see the sunrise and sunset from just one window in the winter at these latitudes (thus the comment on the window in the first video is correct). The sun just pops up over the tree lined horizon, make a weak attempt at a loop and pops down again, all framed in one window facing south.

Enjoy! :)

Inside, top floor living area


Outside views from living area


Downstairs basement and home to Donkie and Kwagga



(By the way: We now have quite a bit more room compared to our small apartment in Uppsala - open invitation to all family and friends in SA! Free lodging near the wonderful town, Tierp, in Sweden :)

C&R

Small Lego Accidents

A sad day in our town...

R&C