Thrifty Thursday
Drumroll please…..
I am feeling awfully happy with myself for this Thrifty Thursday. A free pallet helped me to manage a pretty darn sexy front door for just $12 total! With some basic (and I mean basic) woodworking skills, you can manage a custom screen door that will give your home some crazy fabulous curb appeal while bringing in the fresh summer night air!
DIY Screen Door Supplies
1 roll of screening
door handle
two standard door hinges
T Square or L shaped ruler
torch
staple gun
gold tacks
drill
screws
measuring tape
pallet wood measuring:
two sides are 80″ long 1X4’s
top is a 36 1/4″ 1X4
mid section is a 30″ 1X4
four horizontal slats are .5X4 cut at 36 1/4″
the bottom is 30″ 1X8
Make sure to measure your door inset once, twice, thrice! My door had specific measurements, but every entry has slightly unique measurements (so take my measurements as a loose suggestion).
Once you disassemble a pallet, you should play around with the pieces to see what design you heart. I messed around with vertical piece, horizontal pieces, and a big old barn-style X. Ultimately, I wound up settling on horizontal lines and that is what the above measurements reflect.
Make your measurements on the pallet wood carefully, and make your cuts.
As you get ready to assemble the pieces, use a T Square or an L shaped ruler to make sure that your joints are a perfect 90* angle….you do not want a door that looks all slanty and belongs in a Tim Burton film, ya know?
I may have done this a little in reverse, but I chose to assemble my horizontal bars before I assembled the actual structure of the frame. I just felt like once I had those measured, evenly space and at right angles, then assembling the top and bottom parts of the door would be easy…and it was!
For assembling the frame, I pre-drilled holes and used these crazy long screws. That allowed me to screw in the screws below the surface of the wood…so that I wouldn’t have any screws making things tricky for fitting the door jam.
Ta-dah!
Yay! All right angles!!
Finding the halfway point, I made my measurements for attaching the handle.
I picked up this adorable handle at Restore, the Habitat for Humanity thrift store, for just $2!
Last bit of design before I install…shou sugi ban! The Japanese art of burning wood for a weather resistant and pest resistant surface. All a bonus, but I just adore how it looks! Plus, I get to play with a torch 😉
With the wood burned to a beautiful crisp, and the handle in place, all that was left was attaching the screening. I simply stapled it in place and then hid the staples with gold tacks. I love the pop of bright against the charr!
DIY complete! Not too shabby, huh? Gotta love that the whole project cost about $12!
To hang the door, I used two door hinges and a carved a section out of the frame to make them flush with the frame…I just didn’t want in large spaces for creepers to crawl in!
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Love it! Been thinking of adding a screen door. I have a question. You found pallet wood as tall as your door?! I was thinking I’d have to connect two slats in order to get the 80ish inches needed for the door height. Any thoughts?
Author
Thanks for the props, Cher! I really love how it turned out. Ya, I was fortunate enough to find such a large pallet. I think it was a double. So it was as wide as a standard pallet, but basically twice the length. You can easily use two slats instead, as long as you utilize a front slat width wise to stabilize them. Heck, you could even do a slat width wise on the back as well…just so it is nice and sturdy.
Hope that helps!
😉 -C