Paneled Door Table

No witty headline here, just straight to the point. When your best option is "This Table is Off the Hinge" it's time to re-think your approach. So, by the headline, you can probably deduce that I made a table. From a door. Moving on...

When we moved into our new house last year, the attic was full of old doors that had at one point been fixtures in the house. Apparently, the previous owners had an issue with privacy. As in, they cared nothing about it. Although, I'm not 100% certain where all of those doors went because, save the wet bar, nothing that I could see was missing a door. In fact, we took several more off and added them to the collection.

I'm certainly not complaining because, as you might have picked up...I like to re-use stuff. And paneled (wood) doors are pretty nice to have laying around.

So, why NOT make a table? I mean, I needed one to display some things at Amity Pottery, so why not make one for that, have something to blog about AND possibly sell later on? If nothing else, I know I'll find a use for it eventually. Eventually...

To make this project easier than it could've been, I opted for sawhorse-style legs. You can make those with 2x4s, which are super cheap and one of the easiest pieces of wood to work with. And, once you practice a few different angled cuts on the miter saw, it's really pretty easy. At about $3 per 8-ft board, 2x4s are waaaaay more economical than, say $60 for four of these:

Not bad-looking, but you'd need to build an apron as well for support and to keep the legs straight, which equals more time and more money. Simply put, sawhorse legs are more forgiving.

I cut my legs about 15 degrees off-center, so if you have a miter saw, you know what I mean. If you don't, you probably won't be making this anyway. Now might be a good time to mention that, if you don't have a compound miter saw, you're missing the boat. I use it on every single project.

But, back to the door...

In the left pic, that's how I found it, complete with an oh-so-retro honey finish. Since paint doesn't stick too well to shiny finishes, I used that as an excuse to sand it down so I could darken the base color.

The pic on the right is what it looked like after I filled the door knob hole and sanded it down. I ended up staining the whole thing with Minwax Early American.

Here's where the photo sessions went to crap.

Me, to myself: "So, I am at a pivotal transformation point...should I walk inside to get the camera? Nah, that's too much effort, I'll get the next one."

3-4 steps later...

"Crap, I'm almost done and havent taken any pictures. Quick - take one of something, anything!"

Oh look, sawhorses.

Yeah, and that was apparently all of the photos I took during this entire project build. What you DON'T see is me taking a blowtorch to the panels to create a cool aging effect, the door with stain, the subsequent two coats of antique white paint or the distressing progress of said paint. Really, it was just a massive failure on my part to document this. And unfortunately, you're the victim here.

Anyway, here it is at Amity Pottery, displaying some of Melissa's great pottery pieces. Should I even bother to point out that one of my goals when dropping this off at her shop was to take some awesome "after" pics? I brought the camera and everything, then brainfarted my way back out to the car and all the way home. So I had to rely on Melissa to snap some with her phone camera. Sweet.