Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Renovation: Replacement Closet and Doors: How To...




When faced with an incomplete house and no budget to buy replacement parts there is a solution you can do. At the dollar store you can find large sheets of thick paper and smaller sheets of craft foam squares. I simply traced the original onto the sheets and cut out. For the doors, I reinforced the foamboard with yellow paper to which I made a simple door handle out of which wasnt hard given the molded shape of the original. I am still working on a good way to transfer the pattern of the front door to the replacement. The closet takes a little longer but is worth the time. Be sure to use the shiny side as the outside of the closet and score along the outer edges for clean edged corners and add tabs for attaching the corners. I used a clear ruler to ensure proper scoring and taped the tabs on the inside so they dont show. Follow the same procedure to make the shelf, and I used a small wooden food scewer cut with wire cutters to length and glued with elmers glue. You can click on the photos here to enlarge them. I had a clear rear patio door thats edges were faded to white. I found yellow tape from the hardware store, aligned it with the inside edge of the frame part and used an exacto knife to trim off the excess and it turned out well. I dont think theres a way to make the inside go from brown to clear again, but the renewed yellow edges do freshen it up and contrast nicely againsts the white walls. You can see the tape in the left photo, below it is clay from the craft store you can bake in the oven and it cools to a plastic like durability. I am going to try rolling it out with a kitchen roller, imprinting a door on it, baking it and seeing how it turns out post the results. =-)

Replacement entire house

Alternately, one can measure and fit a piece of foam board in it's place, using a carpenter's square helps ensure a perfect rectangle to snugly fit into the opening. 

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