How to Make Art Out of an Old Door

I’m not sure if you would prefer I be honest with you about this project or lie directly to your face.

If we’re being perfectly honest, like the flavor of BFF honest that informs you the color of your kitchen is reminiscent of baby crap smeared on your walls or that your deviled eggs could use some improvement; that kind of honest would require me to tell you that this piece took a stupid ridiculous amount of time.

We’re talking neck and back pain, pinched shoulders, lots of hours.

However, having said that, I enjoyed every single minute of it. Well, of course, not the neck and back pain, but I thoroughly enjoyed the actual activity of painting all of these rules. For me, it’s the equivalent of free therapy.

I just turn on a podcast during my daughter’s naptime or late at night after my cherubs have drifted off to dreaming, and I allow my mind to be free, to be renewed, to listen, to think great thoughts and dream great dreams. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s just me in my daily uniform, (faded yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt ((circa 1997)) [I’m so sexy]), my paint and paintbrush, and the voice of Jen Hatmaker to melt my stress away.

There’s nobody closed-fist punching me in my upper thigh demanding that I fill their sippy cup with appropriate proportions of apple juice and water, no one asking me for the nineteenth time what I will be feeding their precious face for dinner, and not a soul around to question why I haven’t gotten properly dressed or brushed my hair yet for the day (I have three daughters that love to make such preposterous observations. Real true fact: My daughters enjoy noticing and also making mention of the reality that they know I’m going somewhere of mild importance for the day when they see me doing my hair. That’s sad, isn’t it? You feel better about your life now. You’re welcome).

I’m assuming, given the popularity of the adult coloring book that I’m not the only woman in the world who finds it relaxing to spend time in an activity such as the one I’m about to share with you. So, if you’re anything like me and you love a good repurpose project, read on m’lady, read on.

First thing’s first. Find your old door. Here’s mine:

After spraying off the bird poop and giving her a good scrub, I threw a little bit of stain her way. Minwax dark walnut (affiliate link). After the stain was applied (which wasn’t entirely necessary because the wood was already stained, but I just wanted to make it look fresh), I let it dry in the garage for about a month and a half (it was plenty dry, friends, plenty dry). And then I contemplated giving it away because I was too overwhelmed with fourteen million other projects in my life. Can you relate?

I stared at it and took a picture of it:

And then I stared some more.

I decided she was worth the effort.

Next step, open up Canva.com, and click on the button that says, “Use Custom Dimensions.” Type in the dimensions of your door in the appropriate boxes.

Once Canva opens up your correct image size, just add all of your family rules in whatever fonts and sizes that you love. You can see that I used a large variety of fonts and sizes on my door. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I enjoy a lot of variation in my projects.

After you have the “Family Rules” image looking the way you’ve envisioned, go ahead and save your file on your computer.

Then, open up a website called Blockposters.com. This step is only necessary if your door is large like mine (Mine is 36″x40″). Blockposters.com takes your image file and blows it up into whatever size you need it to be. Your printer will then print it out on several sheets of paper, so that you can piece it all together like a puzzle and tape all the seams, creating one giant poster.

Blockposters leads you through the process step-by-step, but if you have questions about any of the details, I would be more than happy to help. Just ask your question in the comment box below, and I will answer ASAP.

Once you’ve followed all of the prompts and have your poster, go ahead and piece it all together and tape the seams.

Because I didn’t want to have to deal with one giant poster for the next steps, I ended up cutting each rule out separately so the chalk transferring project would be easier. It seems weird that we taped it all together in order to cut it all apart, but hey, I never claim to make perfect sense. It will work out in the end, I promise. Scissors out and…

After all of your rules are cut out, take a stick of chalk and rub all over the back of one of your slips of paper. Flip it over and lay it where you would like it to be on your door, and take a pen (anything that you can use to put enough pressure on it to transfer the chalk from the back of your paper to your door) and write over the words so that it makes a chalk transfer that looks like this:

This is the same technique that I used to show you how to make the personalized wood burned growth chart. I use this process all the time.

After you have all of the rules transferred over in chalk, it’s time to paint them.

I actually went back and forth between the chalk transfer process and painting the rules because I didn’t want to take the chance of all of the chalk rubbing off while I was working.

It’s a good thing I chose to do it that way too, because one night while I was getting ready to clean out my paintbrushes, I stood up and knocked my glass of water over that I keep my brushes in, and it went all over my project. I just stared at it for awhile and tried to decide if I should clean up the mess or just kick-slide the door off the table and chuck it out into the snow. I went with cleaning up the mess. So, there’s some white smears on the door and some of the paint is messed up, but hey, I never claimed to be a perfectionist either. Life happens.

Once all of your rules are painted, the only thing left to do is find a home for your repurposed door and enjoy staring at all of your hard work.