You guys know we love to repurpose items and incorporate them into our home.  I not only love the look of different pieces, but enjoy the creating part of the process, too.  A few weeks before we moved into this little rental house, (while we build) sections of an antique pool table popped up on the Facebook marketplace.  We found four legs of an antique pool table years ago and made lamps out of them.  They happen to be my favorite.  So we inquired on the “new” pool table legs and the guy happened to live a block and a half from us.  We had already started happy hour so we ended up walking down to see if they were anything we wanted.  (I will do a separate post when we repurpose those.)

When I walked into the garage, I immediately spotted this cute little door with part of a frame.  Note the cute little original knob.  ❤️ After he announced he is a picker and has a booth at our local antique store, I asked him about this piece.  He said it was for sale and made us a deal.  I knew exactly what I wanted to use it for.

(This is the best picture I have of it in his garage.)

How to Make a Spice Cabinet from an Old Door

We cook almost every meal at home… unless we are moving into a small rental and know where nothing is.  ????  I swear Deb is the queen of seasonings.  She just has that sense.  I don’t. ☹️ So we have LOTS of seasonings since she does most of the cooking.  I knew for our new house, we would need a HUGE spice cabinet with tons of storage.  This little door with a frame has no bottom part of the frame and it looked like it was built like that.  Someone said they think it was maybe an attic entrance in an old house, because those doors are usually small.  It is only around 4′ tall and 2′ wide.

Making a Hanging Wall Cabinet

We started by adding a board to the bottom of that door frame with trim screws to make the frame complete.  Fun fact, these scrap boards were actually from the “original” House on Winchester.  ???? We then measured the space between the two side pieces of the frame to get the measurement of the shelves we would need.  Depending on how big your spice jars are… or whatever else you want to store in here, you plan accordingly.  I wanted different heights on the shelves because some of our containers are bigger than others.  So I cut 6 boards that were 20″ wide to attach as shelves.

We measured from the very bottom board on the one side and tacked the first shelf with a micro-pin nailer that works with an air compressor just to hold it in place.  We measured the other side of the shelf and did the same thing making sure the space between was even.  Do the same with all of the shelves and add however many your little heart desires.  After all of the shelves were tacked with micro-pins where we wanted them, we used two trim screws to permanently attach each shelf.  You want to attach the shelf towards the front and the back both so the shelves don’t swivel.

We like to use trim screws on pieces like this because they have really small heads.  They basically burrow down in the wood and are disguised well.  I didn’t want to paint this piece so they were perfect for this type of project.  I let Ivy Rose approve of this before we hung it.???????????? She said we did good.

(Sorry for these blurry pictures… Deb works fast so I was trying to hurry.)

Hanging Our Spice Cabinet

One of the questions we get asked A LOT over on Instagram is how Deb hangs all of these cabinets on our walls.  Most of the time, she attaches them DIRECTLY to a stud with cabinet screws.  Unlike the trim screws, cabinet screws have bigger heads.  BUT, this spice cabinet doesn’t have a back on it, so she had to be creative.  She made a “french cleat” from another old board by running it through the table saw, the long ways, at a 45degree angle.

She attached one piece of the french cleat to the wall in two studs with screws, and the other piece to the inside of the cabinet.  It creates a hook-like hanger that holds the cabinet on the wall.  You simply lift up the cabinet and hook it on the part that’s on the wall.

I actually had her make one for the top and one for the bottom of our spice cabinet because this particular door looks good both ways.  We may want the door to open the opposite way in our new home and will easily be able to flipped it over.  ????????‍♀️

Other Cabinet Ideas

Do you remember when we made our essential oil cabinet out of an old piano bench by cutting off the legs?  We used this exact same method for the shelves on that project, too.  Deb had some old boards in her stash so it basically cost us nothing.

You could make your own spice cabinet, medicine cabinet, or a cabinet for essential oils out of basically anything like this.  Deb and I made this spice cabinet together and we thoroughly enjoyed this little project.  It seems like we have done nothing but pack and unpack boxes over the last month.  It was fun to get away from that and use our creative minds differently.

I think this spice cabinet turned out way better than I was expecting and will be a perfect addition for the kitchen in our new house.  What do you think?  Let me know over on Facebook or Instagram where we have LOTS of fun!

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