Baby Room Book Ledge

Red oak book ledge with some of our favorites on display

B suggested we make a book ledge in the baby room that goes across the long wall. Thankfully, with a bunch of old oak left over from our kitchen remodel, I can make these in a matter of a few hours.

The vertical trim piece of a doorway is almost perfect for this type of project. I ripped the piece so it's about 3" wide, and nailed on smaller strips on the back and front ledge to create a channel for the books.

We debated on painting it white, but B elected for the dark wood stain.

Installing requires locating a stud, so we ended up drilling a bunch of tiny holes behind the ledge until we hit something solid (the joys of plaster and lathe).

I think we may add another eventually, but for now, I like the simplicity of one long shelf across the room.

Should hold books until the kid tries to climb the wall with shelf.

You can see where we made some pencil marks for alignment

$20 Antique Door - Score!

A few weeks ago I went to Habitat ReStore in Kansas City for fun on a lunch break. I joke that casual trips to ReStore are "dangerous" because you will walk into the store with no intentions of buying and leave with an unplanned weekend project.

My last trip was a classic example. We quickly stumbled upon a pile of $20 two panel closet doors that perfectly match our house's style. I reluctantly texted B a picture (below), knowing this would pique her interest.

Fast forward 4 hours later, and we're rushing across town in our van to buy three of these doors for our upstairs closets. We could have bought more, but since these all required stripping and refinishing to match our house, I didn't want overcommit to stripping (see exterior house project).

Well, once I got to "stripping," things got really messy. I'll spare you the pictures, but it did take an entire bottle of this stuff to get about 6 layers of white paint off the doors.

The exciting/scary part of doing this is that you have no idea what wood type and finish you'll be left with. I was afraid it would be cheap pine and be a total waste of time. Thankfully, the wood was beautiful and stained up perfectly!

Total time was about 12 hours. I spent about an hour every weeknight for two weeks, and then finally hung the door this weekend.

Here's the skinny 24" closet door in all its restored glory

We kept the original doorknob and spray painted it oil rubbed bronze

The doors ended up being a beautiful pine. I love the thin grain on the frame. Also, we cut out the original panel trim and replaced them with a simple shaker style trim. This saved loads of stripping time.

I absolutely love the idea of restoring old things - the only risk is that sometimes you'll end up spending ridiculous amounts of time and $ to restore that cheap item you found. With this project, I probably spent $50 on this door, including some new materials, like trim, bondo, and fixing some door jamb hardware. The time was a little bit much, but it quickly became a labor of love, so I have no regrets (yet).

New doors like this cost about $240 each, so I think we did ok.

And just for reference, here's the before/after pic.