Making a Room Divider From Old Doors

4 old doors from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store: $100

paint: $50

hardware: $20

a space of one's own: priceless!

My oldest son is eleven-going-on-fifteen. He shares a huge L-shaped bedroom with his two younger brothers and has been jonesing for his own room for a while, now. Building a new room is out of the question, but I came across the idea for a room divider a while back and thought that would work out perfectly!

I really wanted some cool vintage doors with panels in different configurations, but couldn't find what I wanted, so I finally just settled on some plain hollow-core doors from the Restore. This worked out just fine for a kids' room, because it has a really smooth, modern look. I painted them with shiny, primary-color paints, except for one door, which I painted with chalkboard paint. I then put the hinges on them accordion-style so the whole unit would fold flat against a wall when we need to open the area up. I attached leftover metal flashing cut into square shapes to the red door -- you can use write-on/wipe-off markers on it and it also holds magnets! I am going to put hooks on one blue door, and maybe some cork tiles painted red on the second-to-last blue door. I'm also going to put a funky doorknob on the red door because the hole is already there.

It looks really good, it's sturdy, and it moves easily so Isaac can have his "room" completely private or open it up all the way without much difficulty. I might attach one side to the wall if it gets tipped over, but it seems sturdy enough that it shouldn't tip unless someone really gets a good run at it and knocks it hard.

He's pretty excited about it. He's still got a pretty good-sized man-cave back there, and the two younger kids have a regular-sized room, too. I probably wouldn't recommend this for a smaller room unless you used something lighter, like screen doors with filmy curtains or something. This would be too imposing for a small room as-is.