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Easy Cabinet Door Projects

ByGail Wilson Published onJanuary 20, 2025January 20, 2025

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You’ll love these easy cabinet door projects made into a coffee cup rack. I have great tips for you about painting and more!

My stash doesn’t look quite this neat these days, but I think I found the doors in this picture that I’m using for these four easy cabinet door projects. Two of the shelves are made from the small doors in the front, and two are made from the larger doors in the back. I hand-picked these doors because I wanted them to be more rectangular than square.

How To Make a Cabinet Door Shelf

I got busy making the first two larger coffee cup racks without taking pictures. So, I made sure to snap pics of the smaller ones. All you need for these projects are cabinet doors and some scrap 1x. I used 1x4s for the smaller ones and 1x6s for the larger doors.

Attach Shelf With Pocket Holes

I drilled pocket holes in the easy cabinet door project with my Kreg Jig and secured the board to the door with pocket hole screws and Gorilla Wood Glue.

If you don’t have a pocket hole jig, you can use “L” brackets. However, if you do a lot of projects, I highly recommend investing in one of these jigs.

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Need more details on using a Kreg Jig? See my article How to use a Kreg Jig Pocket Hole System

If this isn’t what you’re looking for, check out my collection of cabinet door ideas.

Easy Painting With a Paint Sprayer

I made some DIY chalky paint primer with plaster of Paris in some Polished Pearl paint and gave a large and small shelf a couple of light coats. I use my Homeright Finish Max so much, but even I sometimes don’t get the paint precisely right. This paint flowed like a charm onto these easy cabinet door projects. I rarely measure because paint is always different. But this day, it was perfect!
I think the weather has a lot to do with how paint goes on and dries.

While I was at it, I sprayed some clipboards. This picture gives you a good idea of the size difference of the coffee cup racks.

Paint Many Projects At Once

That was so quick and easy that as soon as they dried, I moved them and started with some chalky paint primer made with Beluga (my favorite Black paint), another small and large shelf, and five more clipboards.

So, while I had the paint and the Finish Max out, I grabbed a chair . . .

. . . and half of a bi-fold door. Sometimes, when I paint and have a little leftover in my paint cup, I look around for more stuff to paint!

After using the chalky paint primer, I gave everything a coat of semi-gloss paint with my Finish Max. The chalky paint primer AND the semi-gloss paint dry quickly because the Finish Max sprays such a fine finish.

Smooth Finish With Brown Craft Paper

I got busy doing other things for a couple of days. When I got these coffee cup rack projects back out, there were four items to work on. A small and large white shelf, and a small and large black shelf. There were some decisions to make on how I would finish them. I rarely have a plan when I start.

I used some brown paper to sand all of the projects.

Easy Waxing

Then, I gave all the easy cabinet door projects a light coat of Clear Wax. After the wax dried, I used brown paper to buff. It was very soft and crinkly by this time—perfect for sanding and waxing.

The brown paper is very thin and came in a package I ordered—I have a LOT of it.

Embellish Cabinet Door Projects | Add Hooks

I designed a But First. COFFEE phrase with my Silhouette program and cut it out in white vinyl. The font for the But First was very difficult to work with.

I used some brushed nickel hooks I’ve had for a long time that I got on clearance.

This is the small white shelf. I had some black hooks that I also got on clearance that looked nice together. You can find black and brushed nickel hooks like this on D. Lawless Hardware (.com). They do have the best prices on hardware!

I attached my favorite d-rings to the back of all four projects. The d-rings hold a lot better than sawtooth hangers.

But First, Coffee Cup Shelf

Pin this idea for later.

I like how both of the coffee cup rack shelves turned out.

PIN IT!

This But First font (Harrington) was much easier to work with. The COFFEE font is Adobe Arabic.

Hook Rack With Shelf for Hats And Scarves

The large black shelf got three ball hooks from D. Lawless Hardware.