Closet Door Becomes Hockey Lockers

If you will just indulge me with a mommy story as to why I even did this project...  You see, my little boy is totally obsessed with hockey - how that happened from birth I have no idea.  This is a kid who at the age of 3 months was laying on the floor actively watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs , "Goal!" may have been among his first words, by the time he could walk was trying to copy the moves the hockey players made and chanted "Let's Go Red Wings!", and when he was 2, he took the white press-board cover off his car table (the kind with the roads built in) and laid it on the floor and proceeded to "skate" in his socks...  


They wouldn't start him for skating lessons at the local rink until he turned 3 but the minute that boy's feet hit the ice he was trying to pull off moves like the "big hockey guys" on TV and he hasn't stopped since.  He has been playing hockey at the local rink for a year now and has gained a bit of attention as he is head-and-shoulders smaller and more than a year younger than the next biggest kid but he's got all the moves.  The coaches just tell him "keep growing!"  

Now don't think this obsession stops when he is off the ice - no.  Our living room is half hockey rink - you think I jest - we have a mini hockey net, a soft puck and an impressive collection of mini hockey sticks including a fine carbon specimen.  The kid takes a small rubber figurine of Zetterberg to bed with him and long-ago declared #40 to be his favorite player.  He also has been known to sneak mini hockey sticks to bed and stand in his bed with the sheets pushed back to expose the white plastic mattress cover practicing his moves in bed.  When ratted out by his sister, he laid in bed with his Dream Lite and used the hard plastic surface part to glide his fingers across in hockey skating motions...ob-sessed...

So what do you do with a kid who loves hockey so much and is finally getting a room of his own to encourage him to stay in bed at night?  Why you make a hockey-themed room he won't want to leave of course!  He loves blue but is an avid Detroit Red Wings fan.  Knowing that he might play for hockey teams down the road of varying colors and also likes other sports, I wanted a particular shade of blue that was more of a gray so it would go well with a number of different team colors.  This is Valspar Signature "Window Screen" in satin finish with "Silver Leaf" as the trim color.

He had some boring, banged up closet doors that had also been drawn on by pen (the things some people let their kids do to a foreclosure when they leave...this picture was actually from 2010 the last time the place foreclosed and we had unsuccessfully tried to buy it).  We decided to paint them but I wanted to take advantage of them as a part of the room.  

I had used chalkboard paint on the kids' closet doors in the old house and when I found this on Pinterest I thought it would be an awesome idea to use it for this so he could change the names and jersey numbers as his favorite players changed.

I started with a good TSP cleaning and then lightly sanded with a sanding sponge.  I applied two good coats of black Rust-o-leum chalkboard paint.  If it doesn't look fairly smooth, you may want a third but two did well for me.  Its important to let each coat dry thoroughly because it will seem more smooth once it dries.  Then I taped off just the vertical lines - this is a set of bi-fold doors so I used the fold in each door as the center mark.  (Just don't do what I did at first and try to short-cut by taping off all the lines at once - if you do, you will find out why that doesn't work, lol...)  I painted the lines with two coats of gloss white and let dry thoroughly before removing the tape and repeating with the horizontal lines.  I just eyeballed it with the lines but you could measure and use a chalk line to make sure everything is perfect.  

My daughter suggested that they wouldn't really look like lockers unless they had vents.  So I added 3 lines centered in the top of each and a little circle in the bottom corner of each to represent locks.  These were done in glossy "Silver Leaf".  The overall affect is pretty cool even without the jersey numbers.

The smile on that little boy's face was priceless as he rattled off the jersey names and numbers he wanted to use...  Just wait until you see what's happening in there next...  :)