Hardwood Door Mat

When my parents built their house 12 years ago they put hardwood floors down in the kitchen and had leftover scraps. Dad found the leftover scraps when he was cleaning out his workroom and of course, Ryan and I snatched them up!

some of the left over pieces

 We wanted to make a doormat, something like this:

This one was made with rope and we soon realized that since there's no rigidity in rope it would pinch our little feet-sies. (One thing you should know about us, we are almost always barefoot. I for one, don't like to wear shoes if I can help it.) My husband, being the problem solver he is, never ceases to amaze me and came up with using cable instead. We bought 10 feet of thin cable from Ace Hardware.

First we cut the scraps of wood all to the same length and then stained them using Minwax, Kona. (We had stain left over from the Crate Shelves project.) Ryan drilled holes all the way through the sides of each slat of wood and through the top, fed the cable through, knotting it each time he passed it through the hole.

Then he would pull back on the wire so the knot would fit/sit tightly in the hole, and so on...until all the boards were threaded. This was no easy task, it took him a while to master how to tie the perfect tight knot and measure it out between each board.

The scraps of wood were enough to make two door mats and we gave one do our dear friends Rob and Alaina. Check her blog out sometime: http://recycledinteriors.blogspot.com.

Anyways, this is how they turned out! We love how the shiny cable looks against the dark wood.

Total cost of project for two mats: $10

$10 thin cable from Ace