Whether your home design style is traditional, formal or modern, nothing quite adds warmth and sustainability to home decor as repurposing. To that end, old wood doors can be the foundation for adding rustic charm to any space. Transforming old wood doors into something useful that also adds to your home design inspiration is something every home can take advantage of.

Sometimes the biggest challenge to incorporating reclaimed objects into a home design, is having a vision of what the reclaimed items can be transformed into. Using old wood doors in home design can be easier when you have a few ideas to work from. We’ve put together some interesting, yet simple creative old door ideas that will help you find the design vision for your home.

Here are some old door decorating ideas that will help you put old doors to good use.

Old Wood Door Home Design Ideas

We’ve put together four of our favorite reclaimed wood door projects that have the broadest appeal for most of our readers. Though the design options using old wood doors are completely endless, we think these four pieces of furniture made from old doors represent the best of the best.

Creative Old Door Ideas

Old Wood Door Table – Ok, so you’re not feeling very creative and don’t have a natural knack for DIY projects? An old door wood table may just be the ticket. Whether you want to create something for dining or a simple wall table, using an old door can be an easy project for even the beginner.

Once you’ve found the old door you want to use, you just need to attach legs and chose from two options on finishing the table top. You can either sand thoroughly and stain or paint the door to bring out its natural characteristics, or you can simply obtain a glass top to overlay the old door, giving it a smooth sanitary surface that is easy to keep clean. The two top advantages to the glass cover for the old door table conversion is that the natural beauty and wear of the old door can be appreciated for time to come and you have very limited work required to get your reclaimed door table into use.

*Pro tip – an easy way to convert your old wood door into a table is to find an old table and simply replace the tabletop with your door and finish it to compliment the new table top. It’s fast and requires very little woodworking experience.

Old Wood Door Coffee Table – Similar to the dining table door conversion would be creating a coffee table using your old wood door. The options for a reclaimed door coffee table are endless, but unless you want a long narrow table, you may need to do some additional DIY work.

For example, we loved this coffee table made from a reclaimed old wood door where the owner cut the door into sections that were used for the top and sides, making a small, function table that can be finished to compliment any home decor or style. Also notice how the underneath portion of the coffee table provides a perfect space for a basket to serve as storage.

Old Wood Door Sliding Door – A extremely popular design trend right now are interior barn doors. A perfect use for two matching old wood doors is to grab some easy to install interior barn door hardware and use them with your reclaimed wood doors to create an elegant focal point with function. A great advantage of this design idea is you can utilize the natural wear and patina of the right doors with just some cleaning and at the most some additional light sanding and you’re done!

Old Wood Door Coat Rack – One of our favorite old door home design ideas combines function and design in the form of a mirror and coat rack. Simply remove the horizontal panels from your old wood door, sand and finish it has you desire, then replace the panels with the right sized mirror pieces. All that’s left is to attach some simple coat hanger hardware and you have an extremely functional entryway piece that makes a statement.

Where To Find Old Wood Doors In Portland

In the Portland area there are really about three categories of sources for old wood doors. They consist of high-end architectural salvage companies, individuals and inexpensive sources for old wood doors. Of course there are additional sources for old wood doors, but these seem to be the most prominent and easy to find sources for reclaimed doors in the Portland area.

We’ve put together a list of a few of the best options in each of these categories to help you source the best reclaimed wood doors for your projects.

High-end Portland Architectural Salvage Companies – Here a few local Portland area Architectural Salvage companies that are worth a look.

Old Portland Hardware and Architectural and Aurora Mills Architectural Salvage

Individual Old Door Owners – Many individuals end up selling reclaimed wood doors that they are replacing and we highly suggest checking online listings for old wood doors on Craigslist and also on Facebook Marketplace. Both are great places to start your search and you can often find that bargain wood door to use for your project if you are willing to be patient and keep watching until the perfect piece shows up.

Finding Inexpensive Old Doors In Portland – We found an amazing option for inexpensive old wood doors in the Portland area. We highly suggest checking out ReBuilding Center here in PDX.  ReBuilding Center provides an amazing resource for all types of reclaimed building materials, and its mission makes it even better.

For more on reclaimed building materials and education in Portland, read the next section!

Learn To Transform Old Wood Doors In Portland

One of the best resources for reclaimed wood doors in Portland is the ReBuilding Center. Not only do they have a continual stream of old, donated and reclaimed doors and other building products. Their mission to offer affordable used building and remodeling materials with the goal of promoting the use of salvaged and reclaimed materials definitely caught our attention. They are also a non-profit resource to strengthen the environmental, economic and social fabric of local communities.

What’s more, the ReBuilding Center offers classes and workshops for building skills for adults and kids on how to safely and creatively work with used building materials in their fully equipped woodshop. The ReBuilding Center accepts donations of reusable building products and calls itself a resource for information and materials. We definitely suggest using them as a resource for your old wood door project!