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how to make a wood coffee table out of an old door {an upcycle tutorial}

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Happy Friday!! How was your week?

I feel like I came back to the island from our trip to the US ‘swinging’, so to speak. Just ready to get things in order and become more productive and efficient in everything. And get focused on my personal priorities … which definitely includes learning the ins and outs of our new camera!!

So I can take better pictures of our current favorite project, our new coffee table that I made from an old door I pulled out of a dumpster.
old door

But before I totally abandon the project that has been ‘updating our living room’ in lieu of a little much needed life/house/blog organization, I want to show you how to turn old doors into a wood coffee table, the easy way.

how to make a wood door out of an old coffee table

I went into all of the details about how I work my magic booty off to scrape, strip and sand old wood here.

old door upcycle - how to make a coffee table out of old doors

what I was working with when I started the coffee table project

Let’s back up just one minute here, so I can explain that I actually chose the part of the doors that I wanted for the coffee table and cut it down before I got to the scraping. Why work on something I’m not going to use, right?!?

You can see from that before picture what I was working with, and I knew that I wanted as much of the hardware as possible to end up on my coffee table. So, using a triangle and straight edge I marked my cut line and used my trusty handsaw to cut my door to size. We have a Superior XT Ergo hand saw similar to this one.  My dad gave it to me about 10 years ago, it’s awesome.
old door upcycle - how to make a coffee table out of old doorsYes, I could have just cut the doors in half and then made two identical tables with the two doors, but I would have lost the door knob and other hardware in my finished products. AND, I would have needed to come up with other an alternate wood choice for the legs of my coffee table and deal with matching the finish, yada yada.

And I didn’t need two coffee tables … so I did what I did. 🙂

Since I went with this strategy, I was able to use wood from the other end of the doors as the legs of my coffee table.
old door upcycle - how to make a coffee table out of old doors
I was able to pull the legs apart from the already-falling-apart-now-very-depressing-looking-part-of-an-old-door.

It gets better looking, I promise!

So, just to recap, I have not used any power tools yet. Well, an electric sander is a power tool, I guess. But seriously, this project was so technically easy.

The scraping is a bit of labor, but it’s not difficult per se. For all of the scraping I use the 6-in-one tool and for all electric sanding I use this sander.

Once the legs were cut to size (I just measured the height of my couch, figured in the width of the doors and the 2 inches the casters would add … yeah, I added casters to the bottom, too.) and scraped and sanded to my liking I was ready to assemble my coffee table.**

**I bought my casters here in Curacao, but these are the exact same casters. I bought 2 with a swivel and two that just roll straight.

From here I think it helps to see a few steps ahead to make sense of these first assembly steps.

how to build a wood coffee table out of an old door

Comments

  1. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW AWESOME IS THIS!!! You have outdone yourself my friend — this ROCKS!!!!! I mean Bruce Springsteen…MY Chemical Romance ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCKS! I LOVE it!!!!!! WOW!!!! You are amazing and we are sending you applause and appaws from NJ!!!! tons of hugs to all — more hugs and hugs and hugs to my little (well not so little M&M Furry pair…hope they are happy and healthy) and one more thing — stay safe — I don’t know if you are in the eye of Isaac the storm — so PLEASE be safe my friend! hugs….

  3. Karah,

    I think that may just be the coolest coffee table ever! Love that you used two doors … and the casters are genius! Now if I could be 100% certain that my kids wouldn’t use a coffee table like that as a sled or moving vehicle … I would make one myself!

    🙂

    Linda

  4. Everyone should be so lucky to find an old door in the dumpster! But if they did, I doubt they would turn it into the coolest coffee table in the world! Love the casters too!
    Kelly

  5. You absolutely do the best tutorials!

  7. So you used on my fav words … wonky … then you threw in swivel casters (a gotta have in any house) and I finally saw the profile of the coffee table … didn’t know it is a double decker! Woot! Loved the table before, love it doubly so now. Glad you’ve recovered from vacation.

    Robin @ happilyhomeafter.blogspot.com

  8. That is so flipping super cool! Love the casters, the two levels… and the doorknob in the corner. Awesome. Pinned to show it off too!! Rockin’ girl!

  11. I so love this table to the core!!! It is awesome!!! You did a great job…gonna pin it!!!!

  12. I really like your table design, and your step-by-step makes me think that even I could make one of these! (Cane pretty much did ours by himself.) And I vote for real life! Yeah, we all DO have cords, don’t we? 🙂 Thanks for the link to our project. Wonder what new iteration one of your readers will come up with…

  14. Only you Karah (okay….only you and Donna from Funky Junk) could make two doors look this amazing.

    Awesome job!

    blessings,
    karianne

  16. It is amazing to me how some people have the ability to see something…say for example, and old door,…and just know that it needs to be a coffee table. I would just see a long split out door?? I love people with vision and this table is so fab!!

  17. Rugged fantastic beauty!! One of the best I’ve seen. Pinning!

    <3 Christina at I Gotta Create!
    Wildly Original Linky party is open!

  19. Simply amazing table!!!…Always so totally in awe of your creativity and talent. You can turn a “throw away”…into a work of art….That door is just so happy now…being in your home, rather than in the land of “the forgotten”…

  20. Love that you embraced all the age & imperfections of the doors…fab repurpose!

  21. This looks just so cool, and I am seriously considering using two of my old doors to make a Coffee Table from my front room. I so love how yours turned out, and the directions are awesome. Enjoy!

  27. That’s pretty fantastic. Looks like you wasted no time getting back into the swing of things. Love your dumpster overhaul!
    Liz

  29. This is just gorgeous Karah, I love it so much. The fact that it has a bottom shelf and castors makes it even better – what a fantastic job.

  32. Wow that is fantastic, and at least your cords are in a basket, ours are, well everywhere!!

  33. This is lovely! I would love to feature this on Reduce, Reuse, Upcycle. Feel free to stop by and grab a featured button. Thanks!

  34. Where are your cute wheels from? LOVE THE TABLE…would even bee cool with newer table and just distressed 🙂

  37. LOVE it! Definitely pinning this one! and sharing it on my blog Post

  39. Hi Karah: What a neat coffee table project–it turned out great! I looked at your scraping/sanding tutorial–that is one hella lot of scraping work, girl. But when you are getting the wood for free, it could definitely be worth it. And I liked your tip of working on something easier in between all the big projects–I have been in easy roller-coaster mode, but hope to tackle a couple of slightly bigger projects soon!

    • Thank you so much!! Sometimes, it’s the easy projects that are the best … no need to to switch to bigger projects too soon. 🙂

  40. Thank you so much! I am new to your blog, and I am really enjoying your hard work!

  43. You might want to keep young children away from the table as you most probably have exposed lead paint when sanding or cutting the door .Try sealing with a clear water based sealer !

Trackbacks

  2. […] This looks just so cool, and I am seriously considering using two of my old doors to make a Coffee Table from my front room. I so love how yours turned out, and the directions are awesome. Enjoy! The full tutorial is here 🙂 […]

  5. […] Karah from The Space Between found an old door set in a construction dumpster on the side of the road one day. She just happened to be in the market for a new coffee table, and well… who says a door can’t be a coffee table? […]

  8. […] The Space Between blog actually took an old door, taken out of the dumpster I might add, cut it up and turned it into a vintage looking table. Check out how she did it. […]

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