Work Bench and Painting Out the Closet in the Workshop

by GrandmasHouseDIY

2 Materials

$200

4 Hours

Medium

Making a work bench out of an old barn door. Aw is there anything more adult than finding true joy in the sight of a big empty closet? I think not! I got to this point by the end of one long Saturday that I called “The Purge” when our workshop finally drove me to madness because of how disorganized it had become. Most of the problem was that a lot of things just needed to be put away but I took it much farther than that. The fact is when a room gets to that point its a sign it isn’t working and I knew it would go back to disarray eventually if I didn’t do something about it… so, I tackled it.

work bench and painting out the closet in the workshop

There were many things in this space that had not moved since I stored them here back in early 2019 when I converted this bedroom into our workshop to begin with.

I pulled on my big girl panties and truly purged.

It was painful.

It was worth it.

(Brutally honest photo of all of our leftover paint – I’m sure I’m not alone here lol. I can’t wait to have them all lined up and labeled on a shelf so I can actually see at a glance exactly what we have!)

Because I chose to stain the interior of the closet frame (not to mention the floor is stained too) I decided to go ahead and continue with that theme. So, I stained the big wood shelves on the right side of the closet too.

(The stain is called Dark Walnut and its by Minwax.)

(I’ll also be staining out the shelves I put up to match later as well.)

First thing was first though I wanted to paint out the entire closet in Sail the Seas by Valspar – the same color the workshop is painted. I literally had the exact amount of paint left to do it – though you can see in the after photos I do have a little bit of touch up to do.

I also decided to paint the floor to match the ceilings and trim throughout the workshop as well.

I ran a line of tape around the bottom of the closet walls, taking the floor paint right up on the wall to create a cleaner edge because I won’t be adding trim in here.

That color is called Tom Cat and it is also by Valspar.)

When I went through my purge and pulled the old barn door out of the closet it told me it would make a great work bench. (Some things just make themselves obvious.)

I had to do some modification first though as I had added wood to make it bigger and to support wheels on the bottom so it would roll. I removed all of the excess – taking it right back to the barn door I had initially started with.

Now I needed to make a decision on how I was going to install it.

The old closet with those big bulky shelves took up way too much space and made getting things out on either side of the shelves a total nightmare… and the main culprit for this room needing this remodel.

…with that in mind…

I purchased some serious shelf brackets. (I spent nearly $150 for the bench and all of the future shelves and I have absolutely no regrets.)

Our new work bench and all of our shelves are going to float!

Barn doors are built with a main support across the top and the bottom and one diagonal board across the center. I installed the brackets according to where they would hit the back of the barn door. You can see a couple of them I had to lower to accommodate the supports.