Remember back in the day when I redid my bedroom while my husband was out of town? Remember how my after shots were sans closet doors? Well not anymore, my lovely reader – I finally finished them! (Yes, as in, just last night. I don’t work well not under pressure, mkay?)
I give you…the makeover that took our boring bifold closet doors from
Drab to Maybe-Not-Quite-Fab-But-Certainly-Better-Than-Before….I-Think
Just to refresh your memory, here’s a little peek at the before so you know what I was facing. (Once again, sorry for the bad lighting. As a side note, I actually figured out why I was having such bad lighting problems with my camera – the white balance had been set to fluorescent and left there. Oy vey!)
I knew I needed to do something about those doors, but I couldn’t buy new ones, so I figured I’d just paint them. In the middle of the week when I was eyeball deep in the room makeover, I asked some friends if they thought I should paint them blue to blend in with the wall they were on or grey like the accent wall to stand out more. As we were debating back and forth between those options, I found this:
And my life was forever changed. I looked at these doors and thought…I can do that! Well, not *exactly* that, but something like that!
Now, as much as I would love to, I had no intention of actually splitting the doors apart to rid them of their bifold-ness, because that would take more work than I was willing to do. But, if I could just eliminate the slats on top and repaint the doors and change out the handles and add some cute fabric, they just might look better. Plus, those are all things I can do. By myself. Booyah.
And so it began. To my delight, I was able to just pull the slats right out. We discovered this by accident when I asked Mr Crazy Lady how he though I should eliminate them and he jokingly said “Just break them,” and proceeded to punch a slat with the intent of breaking it. Instead, it bent a little and then came right out. Awesome sauce.
Next up was removing the hinges and the handles so I could paint.
I used some of the removed slats to lift the doors up off of the plastic to keep them from sticking once they were painted. I also had to do a great deal of wiping down first to get rid of dust and debris. Man, those things were dirty! Once again, the removed slats came in handy, as I wrapped my damp cloth around the end of one in order to get between the slats all cleaned up. Painting time! I think I used about 6 cans of Rustoleum spray paint. I probably should have used 7, but it was good enough for who it’s for.
I put the hinges back on those suckers and was ready to take them back inside. Once they were rehung, and had handles, it was time to add the curtains that I had so painstakingly made.
Cute handles, eh? I considered getting more crystally ones like in my inspiration photo, but alas, the husbandman was against it.
Now, let me tell you about the curtains. My original thought was that I have this really pretty silver-grey fabric that I got on clearance years ago that I love but have never had a real use for. But then I decided it would look better if the curtains in the closet doors matched the curtain at the window. The curtain at the window I had gotten on clearance at Walmart. But not the Walmart in my town – no, no, it had to be the Walmart in one town over. There had been two on clearance. I had considered buying both even though I knew I really only needed one. So I bought one. Of course, all of this was before I knew I was going to go all crazy on the closet doors. Grrrrrr. Luckily (after a power outage that had Walmart closed on my first trip) the second curtain was still there, patiently waiting for me. Booyah! Took it home. Cut it up. Made little curtains. Ka. Zam.
That’s when the trouble started. I had found some “cafe rods” that should have been perfect for these doors. But they weren’t. See, I decided not to cover up the hole from the removed slats because I figured the curtains would hide them. Unfortunately the cafe rods had little hook-things that had to be hammered into the sides. It’s hard to hammer a little nail into an empty abyss of a hole. After much hammering and denting of my new nicely painted door, I got one rod up. To my dismay, there was about a 1/2 inch gap at the top because of the space the hook needed. This was NOT going to work. I abandoned those rods and went in search of a spring tension rod that would fit in a 12.25 inch space. Have you ever done that? It’s not an easy task! I did eventually find some online, where I ended up paying twice what I paid for the curtain fabric. Dumb rods. But they finally came yesterday and it took me all of 15 minutes to put up all 4 curtains!
If you look closely, you can see that the rubber stoppers are sticking out on the bottom. When I originally sewed the curtains, I was planning on using the first rods, which would have fit perfectly into the slim casing. However, these new rods were a bit thicker and were a tight squeeze. The rubber stoppers didn’t stand a chance. (The reason this wasn’t a problem on top is because I just left the original casing from the curtain as I bought it, which was much wider.)
Maybe someday we will actually put some nice moulding around the doors, but all in all, I’d say it’s not too shabby. Certainly much better than before, don’t you think?
Less Pinning More Doing 