DIY Cane Closet Doors Tutorial

Hi, my honeys! I am hurrying to write this up because you’ve been asking for a full tutorial on the cane closet doors I just diyed! I will also have a YouTube video up soon to show the project in video format if you are interested in that! I hated the way our plain white closet doors looked in our bedroom. They were just so boring and honestly, I didn’t even like the style of them. I wanted to replace them with something that added to the room as opposed to just blending in. I got some new cane nightstands, and an idea immediately popped into my head to add cane to my closet doors. I knew the ones I had wouldn’t work right for this project, so I set out to grab some new ones that would work!

Make sure to subscribe to my blog after reading this post by going to the main page of my blog and scrolling down so you don’t miss a future blog post. Without further ado, let’s get to making some adorable cane closet doors, shall we?

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Here are the links to the supplies I used:

(2) Half Louvre Bi-Fold Closet Doors

Jigsaw (Can use hack saw)

(2 or 4) Sawhorses

(8 ft) 24” Wide 3/8” Fine Cane Webbing

The Perfect White Paint

(5 tubes) Dap Plastic Wood Wood Filler

Fabric Scissors

Staple Gun

(2) Gold Drawer Pulls

Additional items:

Putty Knife

Sanding Block or Hand Sander

Small Foam Paint Roller

Painter’s Tape

Power Drill

Drill Bit Kit

Phillips Head Bit

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Instructions:

1) Lay out your closet doors onto your sawhorses, making sure they’re nice and stable.

2) Take your jigsaw and begin cutting a line down the center of the louvre or shuttered section of your doors. Hold onto the door with one hand to keep it stable and saw with your dominant hand, making sure to apply a little pressure on the saw to cut an even line through the shutters.

3) Take a couple breaks from cutting the line down the shutters to remove the slats as you go to clear your path for the jigsaw. Some of the slats may fall out on their own, but some may need you to wiggle them out of their slots by pulling them left to right. Use your jigsaw to carefully cut all the way down the shutters, BUT leave the last shutter towards the bottom of the door in tact for a nicer looking transition from the bottom of the door to the cane.

4) Repeat the jigsawing and shutter removal until you have all the shutters removed on both doors and an open space in each one is left. Use your painter’s tape to hold your cane piece onto the back your doors in the opening to cut four pieces of the cane to size. You want to leave enough room to be able to staple the cane onto the door frame, but try to cut them down with some heavy duty fabric scissors to just about the size of each opening with about an inch or so on each side for stapling, then set your four cane webbing pieces aside.

5) What you’re left with now is holes down the insides of each of the top sections on the doors from where the slats were held in place. We need to wood fill those holes and sand them down to create a smoothe finish to the inside of the top of the door frames. Use a squeeze bottle wood filler to fill in all of the holes on each door. This may take a few coats, with drying time and sanding with a sanding block or hand sander in between, so this project will take you a couple days. This is the most tedious part of the project, but it’s necessary to get a polished look in the end. Pro tip: Have your significant other or friend help you fill the holes! I did them all by myself, but it would have gone faster with two or more people! The process is simple: squeeze the wood filler tube until you’ve overflowed the hole, use your putty knife to cut across the top leaving a flat surface, and then wait for it to dry and sand.

6) Once all the holes are filled and the inside edges are level and smoothe, begin to soak your cane webbing pieces for 2-3 hours in hot water in your bathtub or a bucket if you don’t have one. The hot water will cause the cane to expand. After you staple the wet, expanded cane to the back of your closet doors, it will pull nice and taut when it dries and shrinks back down.

7) After your cane has been soaking for a couple hours, it’s time to staple it to the backs of your door panels. Place your doors on your sawhorses front side down. Load your staple gun with heavy duty staples, and pull one piece out of the water at a time to staple onto the doors. Make sure to line it up evenly on the back of your door, and staple all around, making sure to pull the cane taut as you go. I sort of worked my way around, stapling about every two inches or so. If you make a mistake with a staple, you can remove them with a staple remover or a flat head screwdriver and some pliers. Not to worry, because it’s the back of the door you won’t see. Trim off as much excess of the cane as you can, making sure you don’t trim too much and your staples lose grip. Repeat this process until you have all four cane panels stapled to the backs of the door openings. Allow cane to dry.

8) When the cane is dry, you are ready to paint the doors. You can do this first, but I did that and my paint ended up scratching and getting scuffed up while stapling the cane on. Use a foam roller to apply your paint on the large sections of the door, and a small trim brush to get into the nooks and crannies of the doors, being careful not to get paint on your cane webbing. If you’re worried about accidentally getting paint on the cane, you can paint the insides of the doors before you apply the cane webbing.

9) When the doors are dry, it’s time for install. I had my hubs help me on this one because he’s tall and stronger than me haha! We used the same hardware and tracks that our existing closet doors came with, but these doors so come with their own hardware. It just takes a little finagling to get them installed properly and sitting level in the door frame. Read the instructions from your doors for proper installation.

10) The last step is to add to add your two gold drawer pulls to the fronts of the two inside doors. You will need a drill bit to drive some holes into the doors, and a Phillips head attachment to install the handles. Pro tip: Rub toothpaste or lipstick around the screw holes on your drawer pulls and stamp them onto the doors in position so you know where to make your holes.

Before:

After:

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That’s it, y’all! I wouldn’t say this project is hard, but it is a bit tedious, so just be prepared for that! In my opinion, though, the end result is so worth it! The doors look so chic and really make an area of your bedroom that would normally be basic and boring into a real feature and focal point in the space! It also makes my tiny closet feel more grand somehow, and in a small house we appreciate that a lot! Haha! Thanks for checking this out, and don’t forget to subscribe to my blog here and follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok for more of these fun DIY’s! Also, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel because I’ll have a video tutorial on this project up soon! One final piece of advice: Do not be intimidated by this project or any project. I truly believe if I can do this project, you can too.