Fabricating table from closet door

January 16, 2024

I have for some time wanted to build some furniture for our home. Initially I wanted to build a dinner table, but I have not got around to that project yet. Instead I thought about creating a new living room table. Currently our living room table consists of old cut-up pallets and a glass top plate that I have had cut to size. This works okay, but it looks a bit dense and cumbersome with the pallets. Hence the thought arose that I could reuse the glass plate and build a new frame for it.

After a few sketches and thoughts the selected design was this I have drawn here.

It is nice to have a shelf as part of the design as it can both be used for remote controls, coffee table books and light storage. Hence this design made a lot of sense. The idea is to have a piece of wood on the under- and inner side which can have screws from the inside so that no screws are visible from the outside. I could also have chosen to use a form of mortise and tenon joint, but as I have not tried to do such a joint before and would not have access to the right tools for that to be a succes. I decided to go with the option of attaching an extra piece of wood on the inside to carry the weight of the shelf and join the table together.

Originally I planned to use a kitchen table top and cut it into pieces. But those table tops were not cheap and I wanted to at least try it before hand on something cheaper, then I could always buy the more expensive wood and try all over again. So I looked through some local classifieds for old or used wood. After some browsing I came upon a guy selling an old door from a closet that looked interesting. It was both wide and long enough to cut the pieces from that I needed. All I had to ensure was that it was not just plywood with a wrap of wood finish. Luckily it turned out to be real wood and I went and bought it for under a fifth of the price of the kitchen table top I had looked at.

Getting started

Visiting my parents home over the weekend gave me a good excuse to start the little project.

I had changed the blade on my fathers old circular saw, but as I was unsure about how nice a cut it would make I started by cutting the sides for the table 1,5 cm too long. These were cut from either end of the door to have the same cuttings on each.

The saw made a very fine cut and I could have cut it the right length to start with. But I made some small errors pushing the saw, so all in all it was good that I could make the final cut later.

Once I had cut either end from the door I was left with the middle part - obviously. As there is a hole that was used for the door knob I decided to measure out from the middle to get this hole centeret in the shelf of the table. If I had just measured from one end then the hole would have ended up being positioned more to one side than the other.

I was lucjy that this also meant that I could get rid of the only real “fault” in the door, which was a small part that was cracked.

My original plan was to position the shelf halfway up the “legs” so there would be equal amounts of air between the floor and the shelf as between the shelf and the top glass plate. But looking at the rear side of the two ends I had cut to use for end “legs” I saw these holes that was clearly used for the hinges.

Instead of fighting against the material I decided to work with it instead. If I placed the shelf a little higher it could instead cover these holes. As a side-effect these holes are placed very close to the vertical cut seen from the other side.

So all in all I think it will look quite good with the shelf being placed at the same height as this vertical line.

But this was as far as I made it this day.

I still need to grind all of it down, make the pieces of wood I will use to connect the end to the shelf and then assemble everything.

All of that will have to wait till part two though.