Closet Shelf: Old Meets New

Upcycled Shelving unit

To begin our projects we were given a $20 store credit at Habitat for Humanity ReStore and were told to give new use to the products that we had bought from the store. After looking around the store i decided on making a shelving unit. I chose to buy a set of bifold closet doors, Crown Moulding, pressed wood. I was also able to use 2 donated pallets found outside a local business.

Before I could use the pallets I first had to rip them apart and remove the nails.

I wanted an old weathered look for my project and decided to sand down
the closet doors to give them the vintage look. Once the pallets were taken apart they needed to be cleaned up and sanded down before they could be used for the rest of the project.

After sanding the doors down I sealed them with a clear matte spray to finish them off. Once the pallets were taken apart they needed to be cleaned up and sanded down. Sanding them changed the colour and they no longer looked like worn old wood so I decided to use a steel wood wash to give them that old look back. To make the wash I filled a jar with pure white vinegar and steel wool. I left the mixture for 3 days to oxidize. I used the soaked steel wool as the brush to apply the wash to the wood.

After the materials were all prepped I was able to move onto the construction phase of the project. I began by screwing one piece of wood to the top and bottom of the closet doors to ensure that they were square. I had to drill pilot hole to prevent the wood from splitting. One by one I drilled the boards onto the doors using a square to make sure that each board stayed as horizontal as possible.

After each of the pallet pieces were attached to the doors I used a piece of wood as the top to keep the unit stable and to eventually hang the shelves from. I painted the moulding white so it would match the doors. I cut the trim to size and attached it to the unit.

For my shelves I used Tempered Glass donated from a Local Glass Company. I used aircraft wire to hang the glass shelves.