Upcycled Cabinet Door into a Functional and Cute Entry Way Sign

When you think about decorating your home, you may start thinking about your living room, kitchen, bedroom or other major room in the house. Often times our entry ways get left out and become a room to collect shoes, coats and dirty foot prints. What I love about entry ways is that because it’s a small room, you can really make a big splash with your decor with small pieces and a small budget. In this project, we’re going to look at a simple DIY project for creating a functional and completely stylish entry way sign from an old cabinet door.
A good friend of mine, Erin, just moved into a new house and as any new homeowner knows, that means lots of decorating is in her future. When she told me about this project she was doing I knew it would be a great one to share with all of you.
She wanted something to go above a small entry table that would welcome her guests as they entered her home. She had this old scrapped cabinet door that was painted a really pretty turquoise color, and did just a few simple steps to turn it into a fantastic entry way sign.
Step 1 – The first step was to print off a quote she would paint onto the sign. Any quote or phrase will work, just make sure it fits exactly in the space it is to appear, in this case, over the face of the cabinet door. Instead of doing a full transfer, she simply traced over the lettering so that it made a light impression on the wood.
Step 2 – Now that the light impression on the wood was made, it was time to paint. She free-hand painted over the impression with black paint, reproducing the lettering exactly how it was on paper.
Step 3 – With a sandpaper block, she went over the entire sign, including the painted letters to give it a distressed and aged appearance.
Step 4 – Next, she added the glass knobs to opposite corners of the cabinet door. She did this by first pre-drilling holes for each one and then screwed them onto the wood. You can pick up glass knobs at any home improvement store but in my past projects I’ve always gotten these glass knobs from Amazon simply because they are so inexpensive so it’s easy to coordinate the same look throughout my whole house.
Step 5 – The last thing you will want to do in a project such as this is to mount some hardware on the back so that it can be hung. For this project she used a large D-Ring picture hanger. If you only need a couple of D-Ring hangers, you can grab these from Lowes or Home Depot for just a couple of dollars, however, if you have more upcoming projects where you might need more, you can get them in quantity at a great price on Amazon.
I just love this entry way welcome sign. It’s simply, cute and adds just a touch of “custom decor” to her entrance.
Have you done any super quick and easy DIY projects for your entry way? Be sure to share them with us!
Timothy Torrents
February 3, 2015 at 10:11 pm
That’s nice, my girlfriend is planning on re-decorating her room so I’ll show her this article and see what she thinks!
Mel Day
February 4, 2015 at 8:52 pm
Love that idea of a welcoming sign – and those words are great. Nifty idea.
Sara
February 16, 2015 at 8:47 pm
Misty, what a creative friend you have. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how she ‘eyed’ the lettering so well. Steady hand.
The entry way here is not really something separate. It is simply a vanity catchall right now.
Misty Spears
February 26, 2015 at 3:46 pm
She’s amazingly talented at that sort of stuff. I would imagine if I would have done it myself it would have looked like my 2 year old did it…and I probably would have given her full credit for it.