How to Turn a Bifold Door Into Art

A while back, I started working on our upstairs linen closet by making a nice little shelf organizer. I mentioned then that I had an idea for changing up the closet’s bifold door, and now I’ve finally gotten around to it! This was pretty simple once I figured it out, and since I used materials I mostly had already, it only cost me $3 and a quick trip to Lowe’s for the magnetic catch.

Best of all – no more bifold door! (I hate them to an irrational degree. 😜) There are 6 doors in this tiny hall, so making this one look different at least lessens the forest of doors.

Step 1: Uninstall the bifold door and remove the unneeded hardware. First, I reached up to the top track and popped down the little pin with the roller that let the door slide on the track. Then, I moved to the top of the other side and popped down the pin that held that door section on the pivot bracket. This freed the door so that I had to catch it, and I carefully lifted the door’s bottom pin out of the bottom pivot bracket to completely free the door.

It’s important to leave that bottom pivot hardware and the top pivot hardware – these will make the door swing open and closed later. But the first top hardware with the roller is no longer needed because the door won’t need to slide on the track. Also, you need to remove the hinges on the backs that hold the door sections together.

Also, if you have a handle on the door, you need to take that off. (This could be replaced later, but I didn’t want or need one.)

Step 2: Cut door if necessary. My doorframe had a kind of overlap around it to cover the gap between the door and the doorframe. Since a swinging door would hit this, I had to cut my bifold door to make it narrower in order to avoid hitting that overlap. I decided, since my doors were hollow, to cut one inner side and take off about 3/4 inch to make the door thinner. By cutting off the inner side, it would leave the outer sides of the door solid – this would look better and also be more solid for attaching my decorative pieces.

Side note: I could have changed the whole doorframe, but that seemed like a lot of work I didn’t want to deal with. If you want to make a kind of hidden door/bookshelf kind of thing, you could do that too by changing the door frame.

Anyway, I took one of the bifold door sections and ran it through my table saw to cut off 3/4 inch. (If you don’t have a table saw, a circular saw or jigsaw would work too.)

Setting my 2 door sections upside down on sawhorses, I lined them up so that the cut side was on the inside, touching against the solid inner side of the other door section.

Step 3: Fasten door sections together. To make the 2 sections of the bifold door into 1 solid, swinging door, you just need to put something solid across the backsides of the doors. The easiest way to start this is to use the same hinges that joined the doors before, only now you turn them the other way so they act as solid braces (see picture below). This will hold the doors together, but to really keep them from bending at all…

Taking 3 scrap wood pieces, I put wood glue on each and then used Brad (my nail gun) to nail them in place near the top, middle, and bottom of the door. That really made my 2 doors secure as 1 door now.

(These strips of wood will also be nice if I want to screw in hooks to hang bags or whatever on the inside of the closet.)

Since now is the time to flip the door over so that the front side is on top, this is a good test for how solid the door is.

Step 4: Attach the canvas. You could use real canvas or anything you think will be strong enough not to rip/break. I had an old window shade from my daughter’s room that was pretty long, so I used that. It wasn’t quite long enough, but it was wide enough that I’d have extra to run a strip at the top and bottom to cover the whole door. Since I planned to put decorative wood pieces near the top and bottom anyway, I knew I could use those to cover the seams of my “canvas.”

If you’ve got one big piece to work with, obviously that would be easier. But, this wasn’t a bad way to go if you don’t have something big enough.

After cutting my shade free from the roller, I simply measured so that my main piece would be centered vertically on the door, and then I needed about 6 inch strips at either end.

With this plan, I lined up one side of the shade along the side of my door, making sure that it would be the side of the door that would be swinging open, not the side that would be pivoting. I also made sure the top of the shade was 6 inches down from the top of the door.

Then, I quickly used my staple gun to staple the edge of the shade and hold it in place along the long side. I stapled about every 2-3 inches all along that long side first.

To keep the canvas square, I next stapled along the top, but these I spaced out more because I knew I’d also be stapling the 6-inch strip over it anyway.

Next, I pulled the shade tight over the far side of the door and stapled the shade along that side. This way, the shade/canvas would wrap around the door, and these staples would never be seen because it was the pivoting side of the door against the doorframe.

With the shade stapled on, I could now cut the excess off past my staples on the door’s pivot side. Again, this side will never be seen, so I didn’t worry too much about cutting it perfectly straight. I just made sure it didn’t go farther than the back edge of the door.

Next, I took my shade leftovers and lined up a strip to cover the top 6-inch gap. I overlapped my main piece only slightly so it wouldn’t be too thick, and I made sure the end lined up with the edge of the main piece. Then I stapled it on. Once those top staples held the strip secure, I wrapped the strip over the pivot side like I’d done with the main piece, then stapled it into the side and cut off the excess.

For the top of the strip, I wrapped this over the door also. The only difference here was that I had to cut a little away to leave space for the door’s pivot hardware. But it was easy to staple the shade secure around this, and again it didn’t really matter what it looked like because you’re never going to see the top of the door.

I did pretty much this exact same thing for the bottom 6-inch gap. I cut around the pivot hardware there too. Again, you’re not going to see the bottom.

Basically, wrap your door in canvas and staple it on, just don’t wrap the side that you’re going to see when opening and closing the door.

Step 5: Paint your art. This is the fun part, of course. Now that you’ve got this giant canvas, paint whatever you want on it! I’d found inspiration from a painting on Pinterest, and I wanted to use paint colors I’d used elsewhere in the house to tie it all together in our blue and green hallway.

I will fully confess that I spent 3 hours on my first attempt before deciding I didn’t like it and starting over. 🤪 But once I changed out what brush I was using, I began to get the look I was after.

Once my painting was dry, I carefully took the door upstairs and replaced it. This meant fitting the top pivot pin in place and also the bottom little pin. This allowed the door to pivot once again, and that’s all it took to hold the door in place so that it would swing open and closed.

Step 6: Make 1×2 decorative pieces. With my door in place, I took a lot of 1×2 scraps and figured out how much I would need to cover the edge along the front of the door where the side of the canvas and the staples showed. This was about 79 inches.

I also needed some to go over the seams at the top and bottom, BUT I made sure I didn’t go all the way to the pivot side of the door because that would get in the way when the door opened against the doorframe. I figured this out by simply opening the door and holding a finger where the doorframe touched the door. Then, I measured across the door to that point – about 18 inches.

I also wanted 2 more strips to go across the door like the top and bottom 18-inch pieces. (More on why later.)

I designed all this to mimic the “picture frame” I’d made for my art on another wall of our hallway. (You can see that tutorial here.) To get the look I wanted, I set my miter saw at 30 degrees and cut a bunch of pieces to make shapes like in the picture below.

With my pieces cut, I sanded all the edges to soften the sharp sides and corners.

Next, I painted the wood pieces a nice “Royal Pine” green color to match the inspirational frame and also my floor. (See that whopper of a floor project here.) I had 2 little girl helpers with the first coat, and then I applied a second.

Step 7: Attach the decorative wood. When the paint was dry, I took all my pieces up to the hallway closet where the door was waiting. I wanted to attach these in place to be sure it would all fit within the doorframe. And I wanted to use a level and be sure the pieces were attached in straight, level lines if the door hung a little crooked – which, fortunately, it didn’t.

Starting at the bottom, I first attached the piece that went across the bottom seam. To give it extra hold, I used a little wood glue on the back. Carefully, I used a level, held the wood in place, and punched in a few nails with Brad.

Because my knees weren’t ready to stand up yet (lol), I next took a little piece to fit vertically under this crosspiece, filling in the space at the bottom of the door. This piece also started the vertical run along the door’s opening side. I leveled this little piece vertically and nailed it on, making sure it covered the staples and the outer edge of the canvas.

With those starters on, I moved to the top and repeated this for the crosspiece over the top seam. Next went the vertical piece at the very top.

From there, I moved up and down between the top and the bottom, adding pieces at each end that matched in size. These met in the middle, and I fortunately had measured correctly so that my pieces met just fine to make a nice straight line all the way up the front edge of the door.

Lastly, I measured to find where the last 2 decorative crosspieces needed to go to look even. I glued these again, then used a level to get them exactly right before nailing them on.

Step 8: Finishing fixes. With all these pieces nailed on, I needed to use a little wood filler to hide my nail holes. This was easy but of course looked messy once I was done.

All it took to fix this was quick touchups with my same green paint. (And I painted that one wood end that I’d somehow missed. 🤦‍♀️)

I also ended up painting the side of the door that opened because it looked better and really helped to hide the canvas between the door and the decorative wood edging.

ALSO, your door might swing open a bit, since the only hardware is on the pivoting side. To fix this, I got a little $3 magnetic cabinet catch and a scrap piece of 1×2. After nailing the 1×2 to the inside of the doorframe, I screwed the catch on the top, then screwed the metal plate onto the side of the door at the same height.

This allowed the magnetic catch to hold the door in place when closed, and it’s completely out of the way and barely noticeable because of the baseboard around the door anyway. Just BE SURE to test the placement, and make sure you pick a size that leaves space for your door to open and close correctly.

Side note: If you must, you can put a magnetic catch at the top of the doorframe. I did this for my bifold-converted doors downstairs, and that works too. I just had a bigger gap at the top of this door, so I didn’t want to have to put a bigger piece of wood up there to fill the gap.

Step 9: Add picture frames. This idea had really started my plan in the first place.

While the touchup paint dried, I grabbed 3 spare wooden picture frames and painted them the same green.

When everything was dry, I found 3 small nails and picture hooks. Gently, I hammered them into my top 3 crosspieces, making sure to center the nail placement across the door – so at about 11 and 1/4 inches.

Finally, I hung the picture frames on the nails.

All finished, it looks pretty cool, like layers of art but also like pictures just hanging over wallpaper. These frames will be great for hanging my girls’ favorite artwork on display, and it’s somewhere special that can be just for their art but “fancy.”

I really like how this turned out, and it’s pretty cool that I don’t even need a handle on the door because of the wood. You could add a handle if you wanted, but I thought it would look too busy. And, this way, the whole door hides a bit as a door and looks like an artsy wall nook.

---

DIY Must-Have Lists