TV CABINET BARN DOOR

For this project, we modified a 20 year old existing TV cabinet/armoire to have a barn door with extra storage. The room this unit was in served as the family den and exercise room. The exercise and yoga mats were just sitting in the corner and were a real eyesore. This addition allows the exercise gear to be hidden away and easily accessible when needed!

Here are some before pictures of this piece of furniture. It has 3 separate units. The center and the two side shelving units are independent from the main cabinet and are not connected. Also notice the wood at the bottom of each unit has a curvy edge. You will notice this more in the second image. The curvy edge gave the unit a “dated” look, so we remedied that issue as well.

Our first step was the demo process. We removed the curvy wood face frames from the bottoms of each piece. We also removed the top trim work that was on the left shelving unit. We cut new face frames for the bottoms to fit, stained and then re-installed them.

After that was completed, we got to work on the closet addition, starting with framing out the supports. We added a 2×4 to the backside of the shelving unit at the top. The 2×4 extends out past the unit and to the wall corner, and is attached to the studs in the wall, creating a built in unit. From this 2×4, we built a “box” which would dictate the size of the “closet” space we were creating. The one side of this box attaches to the studs in the wall, and the other side attaches to the shelving unit.

Next, we added a 1×2 down the wall from the 2×4 support box to the baseboard. This will give the face frame something to attach to.

After that step, we built the face frame. The face frame is an (upside-down) L-shape which covers the left side from the floor to the top, and across the top of the closet area. It connects to the side of the shelving unit and covers the 2×4 frame. Since the baseboard was already there, we created a template of the profile of the baseboard, and cut the face frame to fit against it like a puzzle piece. Before attaching the face frame, we stained it. We used Varathane Provincial, which was an exact match to the unit.

Next we added a 1×4 at the top of the shelving unit. This piece went from the unit all the way to the wall, covering the face frame and the raw wood on the shelving unit that was exposed when we removed the trim. We used a piece of moulding to trim the bottom of this piece. We didn’t take a picture of this step, but you can see it in this picture below beneath the barn door railing (which was installed next).

We ordered the barn door hardware from Amazon. It was 8 feet in length, but we didn’t need 8 feet, so we cut the extra off with our Dremel and a metal cutting disc. We spray painted the raw edge this created, and once dried, we installed the rail.

Now that the rail is installed, we could measure for the door. The door was a very simple build, just horizontal slats attached to framing 1×3 boards. We attached the slats with our Kreg Jig and then used our finish nailer to attach the framing. We wanted a rustic look to match the TV cabinet, so we just used standard pine available at Home Depot. Once the door was built, we were able to attach the hardware.

With that, the unit was finished! You can see in the picture below that it gives plenty of storage for the athletic mats that were an eyesore in the corner of the room before.

Thanks for reading!

PRODUCTS AND LINKS

All wood related to this project was purchased at Home Depot.