How To Upcycle A Hollow Core Door Into A Hall Tree

I love recycled door projects. Here's one I made a while ago that was a lot of fun.

The first thing I did was paint all the pieces the same shade of grey.

Then I attached the door to the nightstand with these metal angle brackets; aka: L brackets angle braces, or angle cleats.

First, I made sure it lined up and then screwed the bracket into the door. Next, I screwed the bracket into the nightstand.

I bought this doorknob and the doorknob backplate at an antique mall in a misc. bag for $2! The backplate was rusty, so I spray painted it black. The knob itself had fake 90's brass on the metal part, so I taped off the glass part and spray painted it black to match.

Since this doorknob didn't have a knob on the other side, I had to come up with a way to attach the door knob backplate to the door knob, so I took those two pieces to the local hardware store and purchased the perfectly sized bolt and washer to hold them together.

Check out this fancy doorknob backplate!

https://www.vandykes.com/polished-brass-backplate-9-5/8-x-2-5/16lacquered/p/204782/

Then I situated it over the doorknob hole in the door and screwed the doorknob backplate into the frame of the door to hold it in place.

Since the edges of a hollow core door have a solid wood frame (stile) on the inside, I decided to mount the hooks into a strip of scrap wood trim that I had already painted grey, and then attached that strip of wood to the door. You can see the screws at both ends of the strip of wood directly under the shelf brackets.

If I would have screwed the hooks directly onto the door it wouldn't have worked out to well because they would have nothing solid underneath them to hold them in place. It would be way too easy for the weight of a piece of clothing to pull them right out of the door.

I purchased the brackets to hold the top shelf from a local hardware store for under $3 each. Once again these brackets are screwed into the solid wood stile that is on the inside of the hollow core door.

Obviously, since it's hollow core, you have to keep that in mind the entire time. And make sure that you get the screws into the actual wood stile inside the door.

Here's what's going on inside a hollow core door.

https://woodshms.com/wp/sawing-a-hollow-core-door-to-length/

The total cost of this project was less than $30 because the door was given to me, the shelf at the top was from an old fence picket, and I bought the nightstand at a local thrift store for $15.

Anyways, I loved how this one turned out. And I was very happy to sell it for $140 😁

I hope this tutorial helped and inspired you!

Feel free to leave comments or questions ☺️