More from The Magic Shed: Yard art...

When I bought my home nearly 15 years ago, it came with a backyard shed, like many houses. My shed, however, came full of decades of stuff. Interesting, good stuff. As it yielded one treasure after another, it became known as the Magic Shed (you can read the story of this enchanted little building here). One of its gifts was these three old French doors.
Now, the doors weren’t in good shape when I discovered them, and a dozen years of sitting in the shed followed by a couple sitting around outside hasn’t done them any favors. They were never in good enough shape to really restore or reuse in their original capacity, but I always knew I would find something to do with them, hence my adamant refusal to throw them away despite my husband’s prodding.

After focusing on redoing the front yard over the last several years, we have started in the past year or so to pay more attention to the back yard. It was a bit of a disaster for years ~ bamboo sprouting everywhere, mud everywhere because it floods, no sort of plantings, etc. You get the idea. But a lot of cleanup and hard work has given us a wonderful clean slate to work from and we are well on our way to creating a lovely, usable space.
One of the things I am not going to change (despite hating its looks) is the chain link fence that surrounds the yard – it’s too expensive to replace. But I am going to do various things to camouflage it, or give the eye something else to focus on. And that leads me to this project.
I decided to recycle the doors by turning them into yard art. I washed off the dirt, cleaned the remaining glass panes and then painted them in various colors. I used outdoor paint and just went with bright and bold colors that match some of the other things going on in the yard (planters, chairs and such). I also secured the doors to the fence so they won’t blow over (I learned that lesson the hard way).
I love how they turned out and it was such a simple and easy project. They will provide lots of color for an area of the yard that really needs it, too. Once again, the Magic Shed provides.

Photos by The Art of Living Beautifully