Reclaimed Armoire Door Book Shelf

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When friends offer me free stuff, I rarely say no. As in the case of this set of armoir doors that I turned into a book shelf! Yes! I made an armoire door book shelf.

These are the armoire doors I got from my neighbor Rodney. They apparently had glass on the large inset pieces.

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Attach Armoire Doors

The first step to building the door book shelf was to attach the doors to each other with shelf supports. I used scrap ripped pieces of 1x material. Pocket holes were drilled into the end of each support using a Kreg Jig.

I started by adding two supports at the top and two at the bottom.

These small scrap pieces of plywood are a steal at a local Peddler’s Mall. I picked up a stack of them a couple of months ago just for this project. You can see they were about a buck apiece.

Add shelves to door book shelf

It took a little more than one board per shelf. First, I ripped the boards on the table saw.

Afterwards each board was run through to make a small groove every 4-5 inches to make the plywood look more like planks.

Then pocket holes were drilled on each shelf to get a secure hold on the book case.

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

Pocket hole screws were used to secure the lower two shelves onto the book shelf.

At this point I had to make a decision about what material I would be using for the large insets on either side. I considered chicken wire, or hardware cloth, but actually went with thin plywood known as underlayment.

Attach panels to armoire doors

The plywood was ripped on the table saw, then put in place with my nail gun.

Install removable shelf

For the upper shelf, I had to use a cleat instead of pocket holes. The thin plywood will not support the pocket hole screws.

Finally it’s coming together. I ended up stapling the original curved armoire doors to the lower sections in their original places.

Attach top boards to finish DIY bookcase

The boards were cut to fit the top and attached using the brad nail gun. Do you see why I wanted the plywood to look like planks? I think it looks a lot better like this.

As in most projects, I mixed up DIY Chalky Paint Primer for the base coat of this armoire door book shelf.

Painting this monster by hand would take forever, so I broke out the Super Finish Max Extra to get this job done quickly.

Laying the diy bookcase on it’s back makes it easier to get the underneath side of the shelves painted.

Oops, I forgot to mention that I also put the thin plywood on the back. To make my smaller sheets go further, I patched the sheets where the lower shelf is. This allows me to use two smaller sheets instead of one long sheet of plywood. The upper shelf is removable, so I painted it outside the book shelf.

After the primer coat was on the book shelf, I liked the color enough to use it as the topcoat. As I was building this huge bookshelf I got the news that Vendors’ Village is closing at the end of the month. So, that may change some of my building projects. It’s difficult to transport large projects like this to my craft show in the Fall.

DIY Armoire door book shelf

It’s not the fanciest project, but it will make someone a nice display cabinet or book shelf. I really love the color. It’s difficult to guess what color someone else will prefer.

Here’s a close up of the plank looking plywood. I’m really happy with how it looks. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before. This option was better than 1x boards as far as cost.

What color would you have painted the oversized book shelf?

gail

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