We’re finally settling into our home! Originally our third bedroom was only being used as a guest bedroom and I was really missing an office space. My hubby and I talked it over and decided to convert half of the guest room to an office space. The room is TINY so we exchanged my son’s twin for the queen bed that was in the guest room. A twin isn’t totally ideal for a guest but you have to work with what you have sometimes.

Below is a before image the of bedroom completely empty. I mapped out where the twin bed would go, a desk, etc. Like I said there’s not a ton of space to work with and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a makeover. The closet takes up most of one wall and I wanted to give the 1982 closet doors a makeover. I can’t take full credit for this door treatment since the previous owners came up with the idea and had already done the treatment on our hallway closet and my son’s closet.

I sent the previous owner an email (yes, they are super nice) on the steps she took to create the treatment. It seemed pretty easy so I decided to give it a try!

I don’t have a great photo of the doors before but you can kind of see it below.

We took the doors down and carried them outside to paint. I painted the doors using Apple Barrel Acrylic paint in Nutmeg. The whole reason for painting the doors first is because when the slats are added you’ll see the brown in between the slats instead of whatever color was initially there.

I applied two coats, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

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Next up came the wood. I purchased four bundles of redwood slats from Lowe’s. It took me forever to find them, I guess I got my steps in for that day! To save you time, they are located in the garden department outside! I also bought two bottles of Power Grab which is a heavy duty glue.

Caution: Be CAREFUL with the slats! It’s rough wood and you can easily get splinters, I probably should have worn gloves but didn’t. They also aren’t perfectly even, they are bit wider and thinner in parts- rustic would be a great word to describe them!

Before you begin you want to make sure that the doors will open and close properly when the slats are added to the front of the doors. Ours slide open and closed and there was plenty of room for them to pass each other. My doors also have a bit of edge so when I added the wood edge pieces they fit nice and snug around the door. We don’t have a ton of nifty tools around but I made do with a rusty saw, tape measure, miter box (for cutting corners), a jigsaw and the power grab.

I started by cutting the edge pieces and gluing them down. The glue does take a bit to dry so I used clamps to hold them in place while I started cutting the slats.

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Once you cut one slat you can use it as a template for the rest of the slats. Keep in mind the wood is uneven so it’s not going to be perfect- remember rustic! For spacing between the slats I turned the extra pieces up on their sides and used them as a space holder. Worked great! You could also just put the slats right next to each other and forgo the space.

Once I had all the slats cut and placed I removed everything and started gluing them down. It was easier to cut everything first and lay it out then to cut and glue. If you have someone helping you, they can cut while you glue!

I started the process all over again for the second door while the first door dried. I noticed some of the boards starting to pop up so I used my weights to hold them down.

Once I finished the two doors we carried them into the garage. Make sure you have some extra slats just in case of breakage or if you need a header board.

The next day I decided to stain them a bit so they looked somewhat similar to the doors we have in the house with the same treatment. I took the nutmeg paint and thinned it down with water. I brushed it on the slats with a sponge brush. I wish I had made them a little bit darker, I just didn’t have access to a darker paint, it was during the height of the pandemic and everything was closed.

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I used washi tape and put it around the door on the metal parts you could still see. I also stained the washi tape.

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I left everything dry overnight and we hung the doors back up. They are super heavy so be careful! I also glued on a header board that you can see in the first image.

All finished! I like how they turned out, I might go back some day and make them a little bit darker but I’m leaving them alone for now! This was quite an undertaking especially working in 100 degree weather but I’m pretty proud of myself!