At last! The 2nd half of our Barn Door project is up for those of you looking to recreate this look on a budget. For the first half- the Barn Door TRACK Tutorial, go here.
The following is just the tutorial for the doors.
Click here to view this image full size.
At Home Depot (or Lowes), buy 11 1″x4″x14′ pieces of pine. Have them cut them in half for you, leaving you with 22 1″x4″x7′ pieces. Having them do this for you will make the pieces easier to get home in your car or SUV.
If you don’t have a table saw, have them cut 3 of the 1″x4″x7′ pieces in half lengthwise, leaving you with 6 1″x2″x7′ pieces. If you have a table saw, you can do this yourself.
Take one 1″x2″x7′ piece and one 1″x4″x7′ piece and stack them next to each other on top of a 1″x4″x7′ piece that has been coated in glue. About 2″ of the 1″x4″x7′ piece will be hanging off the bottom 1″x4″x7′ piece. (That bottom piece will be serving as the frame of the door at the front).
Screw the 2 pieces on top into the frame piece below. (The point here is that you’re screwing these pieces in from behind the door so you can’t see it from the front.) Refer to diagram (the yellow squiggly lines represent the frame pieces covered in glue). Do the same thing for the other side of the door.
Flip the end pieces over, with the frame side up. Line the rest of the vertical pieces up between them according to the picture, with a narrow piece in the middle.
Measure the distance between your two vertical frame pieces to come up with the length of the 3 other horizontal frame pieces. These should be between 19 1/8″ and 19 3/8″. The measurement will vary based on how accurate your cuts were and natural variation of the wood, so it’s important you measure to see what precise measurement you’ll need.
Where you lay your middle, horizontal piece is up to you. We have ours a little off center, and it’s 34″ from the bottom of the door to the base of the middle, horizontal piece. That’s really just a stylistic choice.
Be extra careful to make sure your vertical boards are lined up and square, then apply glue to the back of each horizontal frame piece, place on top of the vertical pieces and let it dry completely (overnight). After it’s all dry, the glue should be strong enough to hold the pieces of the doors together enough for you to carefully flip the entire door over (get some help with this), and then screw the vertical pieces into the horizontal pieces from the back.
After this, putty up the holes in the back and sand them down, then give the doors whatever sort of treatment or stain you desire.
We’ve also illustrated how to affix the DIY Barn Door Track that we posted last year to these doors. If this is confusing to you or you want more information, refer back to our original DIY Barn Door Track Tutorial. We’ve detailed how to hang the doors over there, too.
Please let me know if you have any questions, but please leave them in the blog comment section and not the Facebook comment section since I don’t receive notifications for those.
A million apologies it took so long to get this up. Per usual, Scott is a perfectionist and wanted it to be perfect before we published it. He’s so fantastic at illustrating stuff like this. I hope you find the tutorial helpful!