DIY Modern Style Barn Doors – Part 1

As if I don’t already have enough projects to complete, I’ve decided to take on another one. I have a room downstairs that I’d like to utilize as a guest space/office/exercise room or something or other, but it has 9ft doorways.

The entryways are great when you want a nice open feel, but not so great when you need a little privacy. I haven’t quite decided what else to use this room for, but I know I want it to have doors.

However, I don’t want to close the 9ft entry doorways and make them standard doors.  Ah-hah! Maybe this is the space where I can finally use one of those barn doors that Joanna Gaines uses in many of her home makeovers. Well, at least, a novices attempt at one of her magnificent doors.

There are so many variations of barn doors on Pinterest and I really love most of them. They go from super rustic to sleek and contemporary.  Since my doors need to be 9ft x 4ft, I’ll need to do some modifications.

After looking around a bit on Pinterest, I found a couple of cool ideas.

This one from Paper Daisy Design is probably my favorite for this project.  They did a great job of providing step-by-step instructions and links to all the hardware used for this project.

What I like most about this is that I can modify it enough to fit the tall doorways without having to make a ton of difficult saw cuts. I’m getting better with the saw, but dad is still the main saw operator and I don’t want to overload him with lots of intricate designs. We’ll get there eventually though. You know I have to keep him busy.

Now that I’ve picked a design I have to see if it’s in the budget. How much can a few sheets of plywood cost? Oh, I guess I need the hardware, too.  Meh, it can’t be all that much. These are 9 ft. doors, so we gotta spend a little here and there. I bet if I had doors made it would cost much more than whatever this turns out to cost.  That’s how I’ll sell it to my #1 contractor.

After a bit of negotiating, he was on board and off to Home Depot we went. Well, the fancy plywood was a bit more expensive than I thought. After getting the plywood cut at the store, we headed home and got started.

Here’s a picture of the plywood pile. Fingers crossed this pile will turn into some really cool doors. This plywood has some type of veneer that makes it look like real wood.

We spent a little time ripping the smaller pieces and laid out the design.

These pieces fit together like a big jigsaw puzzle. Sort of! Luckily, I’m an expert wood putty puttier. Since the plywood wasn’t long enough for my project, we had to add a little length to make it 9ft.

I think it’s about time for me to build a workshop because I’m running out of garage space! The cars have to live outside for now.

The nail gun is coming in handy. If I had to nail all of this manually I probably would nix this project completely.

Ignore all the stuff in the garage and take a look at the set of doors we finally completed. That’s not even a whole sheet of plywood.

Dad was real proud of our handy work! See, deep down he really likes this stuff even though he starts out with the bewildered look every time I start a conversation with, “All we have to do is…”
Stay tuned for the completed project in the next few days. I still need to pick a paint color and we have to figure out how to install the rail hardware on the way from Amazon. Decisions, decisions, decisions!

See the finished project here!