Designing, Building and Installing an Interior Barn Door

By Mark Clement

Do You Live in a Barn?

We’ve all seen them. You can probably picture one in your mind’s eye—if not your backyard. Or, on your TV: Norm has one on the New Yankee Workshop. A barn door is a door slab that slides left and right on wall-mounted hardware—stout rollers suspended from a steel bar—in front of the door opening.

However, barn doors aren’t just for barns.

We built and installed one as the finishing touch of a kitchen remodel and we love it. And, I can tell that it’s not the last place we’ll use this idea. The door makes the space private, helps to deaden noise coming into and going out of the kitchen, and works great with kids. From a design standpoint it adds color, texture and function to an otherwise empty doorway.

Before and After.

Plus, it’s a fun project. Fabricating a door on site/in the shop requires a little attention to detail and layout, but it’s a great excuse to use lots of tools. The hardware (hard-to-find stuff) came from www.BarnDoorHardware.com. The lumber for the door slab itself is actually flooring: Lumber Liquidators Eastern White Pine 1-by-10 T&G flooring to be exact.

Other parts include a site-made Z-brace, lag screws (which we painted), and a fruitwood stain we used to mimic assembly details of a door you’d find on an actual bar.

Here’s how we did it.