Wow! The sliding barn door in our bedroom has caused quite a raucous. 104 comments??!! Yowsas.
Wanna know how we, I mean, Handy Hubby did it? Good. Because I’m going to tell you. However, there are so many steps involved that I’m breaking this DIY project up into 2 posts: 1) constructing the door 2) hanging the door. That way you don’t get overwhelmed…or bored. I’m warning you, there’s a lot of math, measuring and side notes involved. Ready? Let’s do this.
We hauled the original fence boards back from Pennsylvania where they once lived at Handy Hubby’s family farm. Then we set to work figuring out how large we wanted the door to be. We knew we wanted it to cover the entire master bathroom door frame {including the trim} if possible when in the closed position. I say ‘if possible’ because when determining how wide you’d like the barn door to be, you must take into account the amount of wall space adjacent to the doorway where the door will rest when in the open position. Otherwise, the door will not slide open completely. Luckily, the space of wall to the right of our bathroom doorway was large enough to accommodate the width of door we wanted. We measured the desired door width and then divided it by 5¾” {the width of each fence board} to get the number of fence boards we’d need for the door. We needed 7 fence boards to get a door width of ~41″. Once the door width was established, we chose the length/height. The ceiling in our bedroom is vaulted, so we wanted to hang the door well above the door frame because we knew the room could handle it. We decided on 88″ for the door length/height. Handy Hubby cut the 7 boards to 88″ long with a miter saw. {This was way back in the fall before snowpocalypse. That should be a good indication of how long it takes us to get anything done over here.} On a side note…we inspected each board to determine which end to cut off. In many instances, there was a ‘bad’ end that we wanted to get rid of.
To hold the door together and give it more of barn feel, Handy Hubby cut 2 wider support boards to attach to the top and bottom of the door. We also wanted 1 regular fence board placed horizontally about two-thirds of the way down the door for added stability and door handle installation.
Once all the boards were cut to size, they got a good sand job {I said sand job} from a palm sander. Handy Hubby blew the sawdust off with the leaf blower {hey, use what you got!}, wiped ’em down with a damp rag, let them dry completely and rubbed them well with tack cloth. Next came the priming and painting. Handy Hubby brushed on 2 coats of oil-based primer {left over from our kitchen cabinet makeover} and rolled on {with a foam roller} 3 coats of semi-gloss latex paint. The paint color we chose was Sherwin Williams Auric.
With the necessary boards all cut to size and painted, Handy Hubby proceeded to assemble the door. He laid the boards out on our bedroom floor to square it all up, measuring corner to corner and tweaking until everything matched up. The distance of each diagonal {the measurement from opposite top and bottom corners} should be equal. Sorry, I don’t have a true work-in-progress image of this step but this might help…
Handy Hubby pre-drilled holes for the wood screws into the horizontal boards, making sure not to drill all the way through the vertical boards below. We didn’t want any screws popping through to the other side of the door since they would be seen from the bathroom. **Handy Hubby Hint: Wrap a piece of painter’s tape around the drill bit at the depth you want your holes. Drill in just to the tape line for a perfect hole every time!**
He alternated the placement of the holes so that the screw heads would have a kind of zig zag pattern. Another side note…we had already selected our hanging hardware at this point, and Handy Hubby made sure NOT to drill the top horizontal board in places where the hardware would need to go later. More on that in Part II of this DIY post, but the thing to remember here is that you need to know what hanging hardware you’re using before you assemble the door. Then came my moment of fame. I stood on the boards to keep them from moving while Handy Hubby screwed everything together…the upper, middle and lower horizontal boards into the vertical boards. Essentially, each vertical board ended up with 6 screws in it – 2 from each horizontal support board. We liked the look of the shiny, raw screw heads showing, so we chose not to touch them up.
Once the door was assembled, it was HEAVY! Assembling the door in the bedroom kept us from having to lug the finished product around the house and up a flight of stairs. It also made quite a sawdust mess in the bedroom, but that was an easy trade-off to aching backs and dinged up walls.
I’m not going to lie. That door was propped up against our bedroom wall for weeks while we prepped the doorway and waited on the hardware to arrive. I had visions of it toppling down on us in the middle of the night. But it didn’t. Thank goodness. It definitely would’ve left a mark. Before it was hung, I was already in love with all the scarred imperfections. The nicks, scratches, crannies and cracks gave it a story. I even told Handy Hubby not to worry about fixing any damage that he’d done to the paint job while assembling the door. He was happy to oblige.
So, that’s how Handy Hubby assembled the barn door with a teensy bit of help from me. Take note that the only money we spent for this part of the project was on the gallon of paint. And if you’ve made it through this entire post without yawning yet, you deserve a pat on the back. And probably a link to where our sliding barn door hardware came from. More on that tomorrow!
images: all Dana Miller for House*Tweaking
budget decor, DIY