How to make a barn door

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

I have loved barn doors from afar for a while now. Eyeing them on Pinterest just wasn’t enough. So, when we got the chance to totally rethink our bedroom I found a way to work it in. As I mentioned in the bedroom reveal post, we wanted to have more space and the sliding doors really made that happen. Our en suite door is a pocket – my brother’s first one and he did an awesome job!

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

The first thing I decided for the door was the hardware. This is the most expensive piece and it’s important that it not only looks great, but is sturdy. Solid doors are a lot heavier than the builder-grade ones that most homes have. Maybe I should also step back and say before the hardware really comes reinforcing your wall. You need a solid base in which to attach the hardware. Since our drywall was already down, we had a 2×4 installed all the way across the top.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

Barn doors can be really expensive. I even found some for $2000… no thanks. We chose to make our own because it seemed fairly simple once you had the track and to save money. Home Depot had some tracks around $100-$200, but they weren’t that exciting. I found my T-bar track on Etsy from a USA seller, which we loved. It is great quality, unique, and buying American / locally made is important to us.

The hardware came with instructions. It took us a little while to figure that all out, but we did. The door is 30″ wide (doorway is 28″ wide), so we needed a track that was at least 60″ long. The sliding door track we purchased had two anchor holes on each end and then we drilled the three in the middle for support. They didn’t come with the three middle holes so you could drill them yourself and make sure they were hitting studs. We had to buy Milwaukee cobalt bits to drill through the metal.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

Next, we hung the track and then measured how long the door needed to be. Make sure you measure and level twice or else it won’t hang right. (Measure twice, cut once). We drilled twice. Oops. Once the track is hung, you can measure from the floor up to a little below the track to have a door that easily slides back and forth.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

Now for the actual door. I stained the wood (back, front, and sides) Black Cherry to match our bedroom furniture. It’s not exact, but I love it. The wood was leftover from our patio pour this summer, so some pieces had screw holes or a little cement. I liked the used/recycled look of it. Originally, I wanted to use smaller chunks to reuse as much wood as possible, but Tyler talked me out of it. Instead, we used full vertical pieces of wood, which made it much easier to attach them to the horizontal pieces.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

The door needed to be 30″ wide, so 2″x4″s that aren’t really 2 inches by 4 inches wasn’t going to cut it. We used seven 2x4s and one 2×6. The 2×6 is way off-center so it looks intentional rather than a random, not quite centered piece of wood.’

Tyler put the door together. He screwed the two 30″ horizontal pieces in from the back side of the door, so you can’t see the screws from the front side. He actually hung it by himself too, which I still am amazed that he did. Since our track was so close to the ceiling, he had to screw the door into the T-bars rollers while they were hanging from the track. Crazy, but it worked.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

The very last part is installing the handle, which you can do on or off the track. We were so excited to hang it – for looks and to block cold air – that we hung it without the handle. We can still easily open and close it.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

I bought a drawer handle. When I got home from Home Depot, I thought it might not work with the thick wood, but it did.

how to make a barn door. DIY sliding door. home improvement. wood decor for master bedroom. | bexbernard.com

What do you love about sliding doors? If you’ve made a barn door, what are your tips?

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