If you didn’t see the previous post about building our built in closet you can see it here.

Now that I have the frame of the closet built, the next part is to add the doors. We went with making the doors very simple flat sheets of oak plywood just like the closet it self. I measured and cut the doors making sure that the grain of the wood was in the vertical direction. I made sure the width of the doors landed just less than half way across the separators on the inside of the closet. You can see what I mean in the photo above.

I went to Woodcraft and bought 2 types of hinges one for inside doors called a 1/2 hinge and another type called a full hinge for the doors that need to be flush to the sides. Both kinds of hinges are European style so when opening the doors they don’t pivot and hit each other. If you’re not familiar with European hinges they are often the type that Ikea uses.

For me I think it was best to add the hinges and hang each door one at a time. It’s a bit slower because it’s not assembly line style but it allowed me to re-check where I wanted my hinges on the doors I didn’t hang yet with the ones installed. To mount the hinges I lined up a door on the closet and drew a line in the same place on both the closet and the door. I then used a hole bit the width I needed for the hinge and drilled the mounting hole for the hinge. I labeled each hinge and each mount hole so that when I take the hinges off to poly the doors I would know which goes to which when I put it all back together.

After hanging all the doors and making sure everything worked and was lined up I took them off, removed the hinges and cleaned the wood. I then put a coat of white oak stain on the doors, a coat of clear acrylic poly and then sanded. The first coat of poly raises the grain and makes the wood very rough. After the first coat I put on 2 more coats of poly letting it dry between coast of course.

I then put the hinges back on matching them up with the labels I put on them and hung the doors. Meg and I looked for knobs and pulls that we liked online. We ended up choosing these white pulls at Ikea which we’ll buy the next time we take the 2 hour trip. The next step will be to finish the bench that has already started to take shape. Just like building the frame in part 1, making the doors just takes time and patients. I did my best not feel rushed but to just enjoy making them and learning about hinges, which I’d never done before.