2020 has been a year of many challenges! Within those challenges, staying at home because of quarantine tops the list for many of us. One part of that struggle maybe not knowing what to do with yourself. Subsequently, you may find yourself picking fights with loved ones on stuff like “you are breathing too hard” or “you are chewing too loud.” The bottom line is when you’re stuck at home and there is nothing else to clean and you’ve caught up with every series on Netflix, what’s left to do? Well in our case it’s DIY projects, including this DIY accent wall with secret door!
Luckily, we made some good use of our time during quarantine and decided to take on our basement remodel. Now we can cross that from our long To-do list!
A Little Background Story
Our basement was partially “finished.” It had these beautifully textured terracotta walls (cue the sarcasm) that would make you feel like you were in a cave man’s house. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the idea behind it, assuming it was used as a man cave. Other than that it was pretty much open space. Within the changes we made were:
- Expanded the space by removing 2 of the storage closets.
- Painted and added new walls.
- Created a double duty room that will serve as a play area/guest bedroom.
- Created a closet space for that multi-function room.
- Added a dry bar with open shelving that helps hide all the plumbing.
- Created a DIY accent wall with secret door, where we hang our dartboard.
In this post, we will be talking about our DIY accent wall with secret door. This is not just a simple accent wall. This “wall” is actually a secret door to our “sweat room” (home workout area) and storage area! The rustic wood planks on the door play a bonus role, by hiding holes made by stray darts!
Today we will tell you what materials we used and how we created this cool feature for our basement, for really cheap.
Materials
- Pallet wood
- Black paint
- 2-inch x 11/2 inch x 8 feet Trim (4 pieces)
- Painters tape
- L brackets
- 3/4 inch wood screws
- Tools:
- Nail gun
- Sander
- Wood glue
- 4 feet Level
- Handheld wood planer
- Chop saw
Disclaimer: Please practice common sense and general safety guidelines when attempting this or any project. We are not responsible if something happens, so please be careful and keep creating.
The Idea
There was an existing door that helped make it easy to create the DIY accent wall with secret door. Behind the door is our workout and storage area. It’s also where our HVAC and water heating unit are located. We already had a dartboard so we thought, why not give the dartboard an accent wall. At the same time, we had seen a couple of DIY secret doors on youtube like this one from I Like To Make Stuff and we agreed that it would be an awesome thing to have in our basement. Inspired by those ideas, we came up with one of our own, by camouflaging that door within the accent wall.
The How
We measured the area we wanted the accent wall to cover and marked it with our painter’s tape. In our case, we decided to go bigger than the door so that the wall would look better plus it would enable us to hide all the seems. We removed all the hardware. Then we proceeded to paint the area in black, including the door and hinges. We also painted the trim before attaching them to the wall the same black color.
After installing the trim, it was time to work on filling the space with the pallet wood. Fortunately, we had old pallets laying around from furniture shipments. Thankfully, they were well were weathered. If you need to find pallet wood, it is easily found for cheap and some places even give them out for free!
Plank Prep
To prep the planks and clean them up a bit, we sanded them down just a bit. Since the thickness varied between the planks, we used the wood planer to even them out. We ended up with different widths (1×4 and 1×3), and lengths (48 inches and 30 inches). Which was perfectly fine, since we were going with a more rustic look with our reclaimed wood wall.
Wall Installation
Then it was time to mount them on the wall. This part was more like a jigsaw puzzle. We determined the orientation we wanted the planks to go, which was vertical (made it easier for the door to open and meant fewer cuts for us to make). Next, it was just setting them in place according to our artistic taste. In this step, we used to chop saw to cut some of the pieces to be able to fit in the smaller spaces left. We used the natural dents and holes in the planks to our favor, using one specific hole as a way to pull the door open, and some of the dents to fit and blend the hinges. To attach the planks we used wood glue and the nail gun.
The Details
Thereafter, Marido decided to put up a shelf so that the darts could rest and serve as a small counter for drinks while playing. So we just used one plank and cut it to size 32 inches long (same prep as the others) and drilled some holes (1/4 inch) for the darts to be able to rest standing up. We attached it simply by using L brackets and 3/4 inch wood screws.
Note: All the hardware was painted black as well so that it would match with the overall look.
After this was done, all we had left was to put in the baseboard and hang the dartboard and we were officially done with our DIY accent wall with secret door!
Note: For the baseboard, we attached it all the way through including the door, and made a 45-degree angle cut at the opening so that it would look seamless. On the other side of the door (where the door hinges we did a straight cut and painted the trim white).
And here you have it! I must say it turned out better than what we imagined. We have received great feedback and some great dirty jokes about it! It’s always fun to see people’s reactions when they see the door in action. As a result, it was a great hit at our last game night!
How about you? Where would you like a secret door? What type of room would it lead to? (Hmm, maybe don’t answer that, hehe!) If you enjoyed this post, please share and comment below and let us know your thoughts on how this DIY accent wall with secret door came out!
For other ideas using pallet wood check out other posts like our pallet wood throw ladder.