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Discarded kitchen cabinet doors got a new lease on life at Greenwood Elementary School on a recent Friday morning as a group of fifth grade students transformed them into works of art.

Covered from nearly head to toe in paint, the 26 fifth-graders decorated the doors with drawings, poetry and scraps of fabric and paper.

Fifty-seven finished kitchen fixtures from four fifth grade classes were permanently hung in the cafeteria as part of a legacy project designed to let students leave a work of art behind before they head to middle school.

Cheryl A. Bunyan, principal of the Brookeville school, said the legacy project has been a tradition at Greenwood for six years and is funded by the school PTA's Cultural Arts Committee.

"We chose this particular project this year because we wanted to have a project that promoted literacy, but we also wanted it to tie into our recycling program, which we're very conscious about," she said, adding projects in the past have included decorating classroom chairs and making mosaics.

Marcie Wolf-Hubbard, a Silver Spring collage artist who worked with the students, came up with the idea for the project. She said the doors were donated by Community Forklift, a recovered building materials store in Edmonston, Md. It is a project of Sustainable Community Initiatives, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., that is dedicated to revitalizing cities.

"It saves these doors from ending up in a landfill," Wolf-Hubbard said.

Natalie Perretta, a 10-year-old Brookeville resident, colored leaves after carefully pasting down the words to her haiku poem about fall.

"It's neat to think it'll be in the cafeteria," she said. "It'll be something to remember us by."

Barbara Perretta, Natalie's mother and the substitute teacher for the class, said she thought the project was creative and different.

"I really like it and I think it's very clever," she said. "I mean, who would think to do something like this with old cabinets?"

Fifth-graders Amanda Zanville and Caden Rosenbery, who worked together on the project, said they both have younger siblings at Greenwood and will visit their door often.

"I've never done a project like this, but I think it's kind of cool," Amanda said. "I want to come back and see it next year. I really hope everyone likes it."