DIY Patriotic Tray – From An Old Cabinet Door

Several summers ago, I acquired four cabinet doors while refurbishing a small kitchenette at my local church.  After I had already cleaned, sanded, and re-stained the doors, we realized the cabinet boxes had too much water damage and an entirely new set of cabinets had to be purchased. 

The doors were still at my house, so I kept them.  

Shopping thrift stores and yard sales are a great way to find old kitchen doors to repurpose.  You can even find discarded doors at unexpected places like the local landfill or beside the road to be picked up with the trash. 

Most people would have thrown the doors out, but for a true DIYer, you hang on to them until you find a way to remake them. 

From one of those discarded old cabinet doors, I made this DIY Patriotic Tray that I proudly display in my home during the warm summer months as part of my Patriotic decor collection.

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Other repurposed cabinet door projects.

I have posted about these cabinet doors in other posts featuring some of the repurposed cabinet door projects I have made with them. 

With the two smaller doors I made a couple of DIY rustic signs for my home.  They were on display around the house for a while but I finally sold them in my vendor booth.

The first easy project I attempted using one of the two larger cabinet doors was to give the old cabinet door a new repurposed life as a patriotic-themed serving tray with a hand-painted design of a flag waving in the breeze.

 

 

 

 

It is a shame that I painted over the beautiful dark stain of these old kitchen cabinet doors because they came out so well and took a lot of work and elbow grease to restore them.  But I don’t have another set of kitchen cabinets to put these on so I couldn’t see just letting them sit around the craft room any longer.

 

 

Easy steps to repurpose old cabinet doors into decorative serving trays

For this DIY project, I used:

• Old Cabinet Door
• White Chalk Paint as a base coat
• Acrylic Paints in red, navy, white, black, and grey.
• Craft Paint Brushes
• Dark Creme Wax
• Polycrylic in Semi-Gloss
• Sandpaper
• 4″ Cabinet Handles from Lowes 
• Drill

 

 

Clean then paint.

The first step I completed was to clean the cabinet door with soap and water to remove any dust and dirt residue from being in storage.  Since the cabinet doors didn’t have handles, there was no need to use wood filler to fill in the original holes before painting them.  

Next, the front of the door was sanded down with 120-grit sandpaper before applying several coats of chalkboard paint to the cabinet as a base coat. 

My preferred choice of a base coat for painting over old stains and paint for DIY projects is basic chalk paint.  Chalk paint easily adheres to most stained surfaces and cleverly covers up imperfections in the piece.

 

 

You can free-hand draw the flag design of your choice or print out a pattern to follow.

For the flag pattern, I knew how I wanted it to look so I carefully and slowly created a free-hand drawing of the outlines for the flag pattern.  My vision for the flag design and pattern was a partial section of a flag that looked like it was blowing in the wind. 

I feel like I need to apologize for the hard-to-view image above. 

You can barely see the details of the pencil lines over the fresh coat of paint.  It was very hard to get a good-quality picture of pencil lines on a white background.  But I am sure you get the idea of this step. 

 

 

Acrylic craft paints work great over chalk paint.

For creative painting projects like this one, my preferred choice of paints is simple acrylic craft paints.  

Since I wanted the lines between the colors to be more rustic and blurred I didn’t have to worry about painting in pristine lines.  Each colored strip of the flag pattern was outlined in gray acrylic paint and blended in with some white and black paint for contrast and interest.  

Little accent lines were painted on with a mixture of gray and white paints to create visual interest and movement in the design.

I am by no means a trained artist. Since this is something I intend to use in my own home, the final look of it was totally up to me.  Sharing the creative steps for this DIY project is my way of showcasing what I liked, and encouraging you to create your version if you so desire. 

I am thrilled with the finished product.  It has become one of my favorite DIY home decor projects.

 

Creating the stars for the design.

The easiest way to make the stars for the blue section of the flag design was to create them in Word on my computer and cut them out as a template to trace out the shape with a pencil. Now that I own a Cricut Joy© machine, I would use it to cut out the star templates the next time. 

Deciding that just acrylic paint alone for the flag design needed some rustic depth, I applied a layer of Dark Creme Wax over the entire piece to age the paint and give the repurposed cabinet door-turned serving tray a more aged and distressed look. 

Before applying the Polyacrylic top coat, I used 220-grit sandpaper across the top and around the edges to enhance the aged and rustic look even more.

 

 

Finally, I applied two coats of Polycrylic in Semi-Gloss over the entire surface and allowed it to dry overnight.  The last creative touch was to add two decorative cabinet hardware handles to the outside edges of what is now a serving tray to finish off the project.   

 

 

Rustic bronzed handles add extra charm.

Thankfully this cabinet door did not have cabinet hardware installed in their previous use, so I didn’t have to fill any old holes with wood filler and could just start painting.

For the tray handles,  I found some old-style 4″ handles at Lowes that were perfect to accent the flag details.  The handles were easily installed on the sides of the tray by drilling two holes through the cabinet door.

With the addition of two handles, my repurposed cabinet door project is complete. 

Actually, the final step was to install felt over the screws on the bottom of the serving tray to protect my furniture from any surface scratches or damage. 

 

Pin For Later

 

 

One-of-a-kind DIY Serving Tray.

Creating a serving tray with a repurposed cabinet door is a great way to give old doors new life with a little hard work.  It is one of my favorite repurposed cabinet door ideas.

Even if you have no interest in repurposing an old cabinet door into a serving tray there are so many other creative DIY ideas for easy cabinet door projects.

Pinterest, of course, has the best DIY cabinet door ideas and suggestions for the most unique and creative ways to upcycle and repurpose cabinet doors.   I hope you find one you like.

Hugs,

 

“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Matthew 11:28