Sew its Saturday: DIY Activity Doors

My parents made these doors for the grandkids this past Christmas. They had replaced all their old bedroom/bathroom doors in the house and wanted to repurpose them. My mom watches all those DIY/Decorating Shows and saw something that sparked this creative idea! She’s so good at these things…I on the other hand did not inherit that trait from her. I am however, a good copy-cat!

I’m sorry I don’t have the step-by-step photos for this project, but it’s pretty straight forward so I hope you’ll forgive me! That…and my parents actually made these, so…really it’s my Mom’s fault.

1. Get old doors. These were hollow and worked well since they were going to be hung on the wall. I’m sure you could use solid ones too though.
2. You’ll want to buff the doors just enough to rough them up and get the sheen off. You don’t have to completely remove the finish, just rough them up so the paint will stick.
3. Once you’ve roughed up the doors, now you can begin painting them. My parents chose a solid color for each door (boys and girls). 2-3 coats should do it.
4. Once the base coat has been applied and dried completely, you can begin painting on the magnetic paint and/or chalkboard paint. Be sure and read the directions for these paints as they are quite different not only from each other, but also from regular household paint.
5. Once you’ve applied those how you want, you can then apply embellishments, such as a border to the chalkboard or magnet area.
6. After all your paint has dried, then you can start adding the “activities” you want. 

For my girls, in addition to the chalkboard (which they don’t use yet because they think chalk is food) we added door knobs (loosely so they spin), 

pull toys for the baby (when she starts crawling), a mini etch-a-sketch to draw on 

and magnetic dress-up dolls. The baskets hold their “clothes”…isn’t that so cute?! 

They also mod-podged letters for each of the girls and added a couple extra embellishments to fill in the extra space.

The boys, being older, have a larger chalkboard area, a hook to hang things on or tie things to and run around the room…but my boys don’t do that so don’t worry. 

The wonderful grandparents they are also put two Velcro vests on there that you throw balls at for fun. I suppose that is better than them wearing them and throwing the balls at each other though, right?! 

A basketball goal…that glows in the dark even! And a letter mod-podged with scrapbook paper for each of them. They also added a couple extra fun things and embellishments on the corners of their chalkboard.

So, what do ya think? Aren’t they so cute? The kids love to play with them and I usually find my Miss Priss in her room drawing on the etchy thing. She absolutely loves it. Well, that and pulling all the doll clothes out and carrying around the house so mom frantically picks them up so we won’t loose them before she’s ready to really play with them. Maybe those weren’t the best idea for an almost 2yr old?!

I would love to see what you’ve done with old doors! Share your ideas in the comments or link back to your own blog to a project you’ve done!

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,

Annette


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