What are you going to do with vintage doorknobs anyway?

I've had this project idea floating around in the back of my head for a few months. I think I might have seen something like it at a friend or acquaintance's house and thought 'I can make that!' I don't remember where I saw it, but I shuffled it back in the back of my head.

The project involved this space:

And vintage doorknobs. First of all you should know that I HATE going to garage sales. Hate hate hate. Sometimes, like every 5 years or so, you might see me hit one of those neighborhood-wide garage sales because you can check out a lot of stuff at once. But you will never see me randomly driving around looking for a garage sale. I hate it. The closest I come to buying stuff from a garage sale is ebay or craigslist.

So for this project, I put on facebook "I need a few vintage doorknobs. Anyone have any laying around?"

My first comment was from my Aunt Debbie. She says "what are you going to do with vintage doorknobs anyways?" to which I replied 'wait and see!'. I had several other replies such as craigslist, the habitat for humanity Re-store, and --thank you E.R.P- Hobby Lobby.

Fake vintage works for me. Look what I found at Hobby Lobby:

Exactly what I was looking for. The set of two brown knobs were on clearance for $9 and the clear glass ones were on sale for $14 for the set. I brought my finds home and explained to Matt what I wanted to do. He was onboard with his part of the project so I proceeded with mine.

I bought a pine board at Hobby Lobby too. Their wood stuff was on sale 40% off. Whoohoo!

If you paint it with a sponge brush and some acrylic paint, you can make it look like an aged oak board instead of a pine board.

I should have done the same instagram finish on these two shots so you could see better, but here is the board painted with a coat of brown-ish (cappucino?) colored acrylic paint.

After that dried, I used a wash cloth to rub some black acrylic paint over most of it, especially in the grooves, etc. Then I quickly rinsed the wash cloth out and wiped off most of the black paint...leaving this kind of finish behind. I loved how it looked.

Time to enlist Matt. The girls and I enjoyed a gorgeous morning outside while he went off to Lowe's to get the hardware we would need. Three bolts to countersink thru the back to screw the knobs onto on the front side, and two long screws to go thru from the front (in the middle).

Do you know what it is yet?

A place to hang backpacks/bags behind the front door!

I love it when a project comes together like I planned!