DIY Barn Door – Simple and Affordable

Last year, I tried to DIY a barn door using an old, beat up sliding door that was left in our house when we moved in. I don’t even know if you could call it a door. It was basically a piece of heavy plywood that had been painted…badly.

I ordered this barn door hardware, which I have no complaints about, but with the crappy door and my haphazard installation it looked about as good as you would expect.

Despite looking like something that flew off the back of a truck, that door was heavy and I just didn’t feel like bothering with it, so it stayed up for almost a year. This summer I was determined to finally fix the hack job and turn it into a real barn door.

I came across this barn door DIY from Remodelaholic, which looked a lot easier than some of the complex barn door plans I’ve seen. Plus she said it was cheap, so I was sold. I followed her instructions almost to a T, so all credit goes to Remodelaholic for this great plan.

Instead of using plywood, which is heavy and cumbersome to work with, this plan uses these genius tongue and groove boards, which snap together and have a great rustic looking finish. I love them because it’s easy to adjust the door to the width you need, and they’re only $7 a pop! I’ve seen barn doors selling for upwards of $300 (not including the hardware) so the total cost of this project was a steal.

I also got a few 1×6 poplar boards to use for trim.

Steps To Make A DIY Barn Door

The first thing I did was use my circular saw to cut the tongue and groove boards from 8 feet long, how they came, to 7 feet to fit our doorway. Then, I laid them out side by side and placed wood glue in the groove before fitting the boards together.

This was a bit trickier than it sounds because the boards kept slipping and sliding, but I eventually discovered it was much easier to do if they were standing up. I recommend having two people for this part of the job if you can, but it can be done with one.

Once the boards were fitted together, I carefully laid the door flat on the floor. I used some adjustable straps we use to move our kayak to hold the boards tightly together while they dried. Bungee cords or even some rope would work for this, too.

After letting the boards dry for 24 hours, I attached the trim made from my 1×6 boards. I kept it super simple and did one piece of trim around the outer edge and one horizontally across the middle. I attached these pieces using more wood glue and clamped them in place to dry.

Installing the Barn Door Hardware

While the trim was drying, I got the hardware positioned to hang the door.

Listen closely, because this is where things went drastically wrong with the hardware on my first attempt at a barn door.

I promise it’s not that difficult, it’s just important to get this part right.

There are two parts to the barn door hardware: a rail, which attaches to the wall above your doorway, and two sliders that attach to the door and allow it to slide on the rail. If you don’t install these pieces carefully, your door will either hang crooked, fail to stay in place after you slide it, or both.

The rail needs to be hung perfectly level, independent of the door frame. In other words, don’t figure out where to hang your rail by lining it up with the top of the door frame. Most doorways aren’t exactly level (especially in a 100-year-old house like mine). A lot of times, they have a tiny slant one way or the other. If you hang the rail along this line, the door will slide, just like if you dropped a marble on an unlevel floor.

This is the mistake I made the first time around and the door would always slide open unless it was hooked shut. So, be sure to use a level to draw the line for where you’ll hang your rail. I used this long level and it worked great the second time around.

The next part you have to get right is putting the sliders on the door. For these, it’s important that they’re parallel with the sides of the door. This way, the door hangs straight up and down. If they’re not exactly parallel, the door will hang crooked.

To get this right, I used an envelope. I lined up one side of the envelope with the outside of the door and used the other side of the envelope to draw the line where I would attach the slider. Very low tech, but it was the easiest way I could think of to make sure the lines were parallel. (There’s a tool for this, it’s called a carpenter’s square, but I don’t have one and I wasn’t about to make a special trip to go buy one.)

Finishing Touches

Once the wood glue was dry and my door was nice and sturdy, I painted it. I took a paint chip from the surrounding wall to Home Depot and they matched the color for me. I have to say, I was surprised how well it matched up.

Finally, when the paint was dry, I attached the hardware and muscled the door up onto the rail. When I stepped back, I was pleasantly surprised. It was a 1000% upgrade from the janky door that had hung there for so long! This door hangs straight up and down, slides smoothly and doesn’t drift one way or the other.

I also have to tell you about one more cool gadget I found as a way to “lock” the door in place. I mostly wanted this so my dog can’t push the door open and bother guests when they’re sleeping. There are tons of tracks you can attach to the floor for this purpose, but we have laminate flooring and you’re not supposed to attach things to it.

After much searching, I discovered these handy roller guides that attach to the wall and adjust to the width of your door. This way, our guests can guide the door in between the little rollers and it can’t be easily pushed open from the outside (say, by a mischievous dog’s snout).

I’m super happy with how this came out. Since I already had the hardware (which is less than $50), this project cost me a grand total of about $80.

Would you put a barn door in your house?

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