Barn Door, Part 3 - Installation

Finally, the long-awaited conclusion to the barn door saga! This post is probably going to be pretty short because A) these last steps were surprisingly straight forward, and B) all six of our hands/paws were busy at the same time leaving no one to record the event for posterity.  So when we last left our intrepid do-it-yourselvers, the door itself was basically complete and all that remained was mounting the track on the wall, hanging the door, and high-fiving eachother for a job well done with no major injuries or insurance claims to report. Before moving on, however, I realize that I never posted a photo of the apron/wheel set once it was all put together. It's some pretty cool looking hardware and it deserves its own picture.



Johnny Five is ALIVE!!!

 The next major step was mounting the galvanized box track on the wall above the door. The 6 foot long piece of track came with four mounting brackets, but since it was rated for up to 375 lbs., and our door only weighed in at maybe 60 lbs.  soaking wet, we decided three brackets would be more than enough. We marked spots for pilot holes so that we would have about an inch of clearance from the floor, and set to drilling. Although today this is the back wall of our Florida room, once upon a time this was an exterior wall, so we would be drilling into masonry. This is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means we didn't need any fancy anchors sets. Tapcon concrete screws would do the trick. On the other hand, it did mean having to purchase a beefy masonry bit. Now, these aren't too expensive (like fifteen bucks), but this is the third or fourth masonry bit I've had to buy for various projects. I've found that they don't last too long, and you're not going to get away with using your cordless drill here. Even with the proper bit, drilling into masonry requires some elbow grease. I've already given my dad a shout-out for the versatile workbench, now here comes one for my dad-in-law for surprising me with a Ridgid power drill for no other reason than he's a great guy (and he was probably getting tired of me constantly borrowing his). By the way Terry, does this mean there's a circular saw in my future?

Okay, so holes drilled, time to mount the track. We used hex-head tapcons, which worked out great because ratcheting them into the wall is way easier than screwing them in using a screwdriver. Once the track was up, we simply lifted the door, slid it into the box track, attached the included endcaps, and gingerly let the track take the weight of the door, fully anticipating tapcons shooting out of the wall, masonry shrapnell raining down on us, and the falling door finishing us off. Alas, everything stayed in place, and the door was hung.







At this point I'm pretty sure we stared at it for a couple of minutes in silence, hugged, and had cocktails.

The finishing touches included adding an exterior handle, which is simply a small stainless steel cabinet handle, guide wheels along the floor to keep the door from swinging outward (again screwed into the wall using the same tapcons), and a recessed handle on the inside of the door (which we all will pretend has been added and looks excellent).

... And that's the story of how we slapped together the barn door. We didn't keep good tabs on exactly what this bad boy cost, but $225.00 is a pretty good estimate, give or take twenty five bucks. Hope you enjoyed following along as much as we enjoyed building this and writing about it. We can't wait to tell you all about the time Kristen was nearly crushed by a falling French door.

Commenting

We've received a few emails over the last few days saying that the commenting system we have in place is a bit confusing. Our apologies. This is new to us and and I'm sure it's going to take a few posts to get things ironed out. Wow. I'm pretty sure that makes us sound old and in the way. Anyhow, we've now opened up commenting so y'all can post easily and anonymously. Of course, there aren't that many of you out there readign this, SO WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Comment away :o).

Barn Door, Part 2 - Assembly

I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for the next installment in the barn door series. I know the last post ended on a pretty major cliffhanger. Will Aaron and Kristen get the door put together? Will they accidentally set it on fire and burn down their house? Will Kristen gain the superhuman ability to open twist-off beer bottles? The answers to all these questions and more are ahead, so stick around.


So the first thing we needed to do was lay out the vertical boards and figure out how they'd best fit together. As I mentioned in the last post, we intentionally bought some funky pieces of wood. That's awesome for aesthetics, but not so great for a project that does require a number of straight lines. Basically we spent a good deal of time switching pieces around, turning them over, and rearranging them until we found out the order in which they fit together best. Once we got that figured out, we very lightly penciled in numbers in the top corners. Laying it all out on the ground was the first time it resembled a door, and I have to admit we exchanged some pretty giddy high-fives/paws.




Cece sucked at arranging the boards.



Well I'll be. A door!

Before going ahead all willy-nilly with the drill, we took our time measuring and marking out exactly where all the screws were going to go on the top board. Once again taking cues from housetweaking.com's project, we opted for two screws per vertical board, set diagonally. We figured out how deep the pilot holes needed to be, and marked the drill bit accordingly. To make sure everything fit snugly together, Kristen stood on the top board while I did the drilling.

Now, once all the vertical boards were screwed to the top board, we had basically what looked like a comb, with the long vertical boards being the teeth. They were splaying out in funky directions though, and we needed to squeeze the whole thing together and hold it that way while we attach the kick board. So, after marking the drill holes for the kick board (again, 2 per vertical board, set diagonally) we wedged the side of the door up against the wall, and used an extra 1x4 I had laying around to shove the whole thing together. If we had a much bigger work bench we could have simply clamped the whole thing down, but this was the best we could do given the circumstances. It actually worked out pretty well. I could hold the 1x4 with my knees and drill at the same time. This next photo is while we were still measuring, but you can see the door up against the wall (actually up against another 1x4), and the piece of wood used to brace the whole thing together.

It took me a couple minutes to get up from this position.

Once that was done, we slapped the middle cross piece on based on where we wanted the handle to eventually be, and voila, the door itself was assembled. Break time!



Kristen puts her work gloves to good use.


The next step was to attach the wheel sets and aprons to the top of the door. The paltry instructions that came with the hardware recommended drilling holes straight down into the top of the door to accommodate the rather long carriage bolts that held the wheels to the aprons. For us though, this would have meant drilling holes along the seams where the pieces of wood were joined and this made me really nervous, so we ended up replacing the bolts with much shorter ones. A big thanks to our local Ace Hardware for coming through big time at this point. Apparently the carriage bolts were A) a very odd diameter, and B) a very odd thread. My boy Frank at Home Depot went red in the face when he sheepishly explained to me that they don't carry that type of bolt and I was probably going to have to order it online. I decided to give Ace a try and they found the right bolt in no time. Ace IS the place.

So now we just put the aprons where we wanted them on the door and drilled... and then almost started a fire. I guess it was due to the rather large bit we were using, but each hole drilled put out a ton of smoke and we ended up having to ventilate the house.

Other than the stench of smoke this went swimmingly and we had both aprons attached pretty quickly. That's pretty much it for assembly. At this point all we had left to do was mount the track on the wall and hang the door. I'm going to save that for the next and final post though, because all good things come in threes.

Barn Door, Part 1 - Fabrication

So ever since Kristen saw this post over at housetweaking.com. she has been borderline obsessed with making our own barn door for the open doorway between the kitchen and the Florida room. If you've never checked out this blog, stop by sometime. Dana and Handy Hubby have a ton of inspiring projects that are very well documented. The last couple weekends have been pretty much dedicated to putting this yellow monster together. It was 5% math, 15% fabrication, assembly, and installation, and 80% trips to home depot to buy stuff, return the stuff we just bought because we should have spent more than 5% of our time measuring, and consulting with Frank, the incredibly knowledgable but slightly jaded and condescending orange apron guy. We're going to go ahead and not only copy housetweaking's door plans, but also their blog post. That being said, here's the first part: fabrication.


Kristen really wanted to find some wood that had some character. Believe it or not, it's not so easy finding 100 year-old barns in Miami Shores, so our next best bet was Shell Lumber in Coconut Grove. Nothing but love for the folks over there. They were helpful and patient as I tried to explain what we were trying to do, but the only wood that fit the bill didn't, well, fit our bill. The selection was fantastic, but we were really trying to keep our costs low, so we decided to give Home Depot a try. I've shopped for lumber there in the past and haven't been overly impressed with their inventory, but the fact of the matter is we were looking for not so perfect planks, so off to the Depot we went.


My dad strongly recommended against cedar, based on the fact that the planks would be splintery and full of eyes. Naturally, I did what I've done for the last 34 years and opted for rough cedar. Yes, it would need more sanding and prep, but we found some pretty beat-up but relatively straight boards that we hoped would work out nicely. Plus, it's soft and easy to work with. We ended up buying 7 1x6 boards, 1 1x8 for the top cross piece, and 1 1x12 for the kick plate at the bottom of the door.

Now, it bears mentioning that Kristen and I learned an invaluable lesson about buying lumber. I'm not sure where this started, or why this is the industry standard, but when you buy wood, the listed measurements are not the actual measurements. Not even close. For example, a 1x6 is actually 3/4x 5 1/2. Go figure. Maybe everyone knows this already but we felt pretty silly after designing the door based on the advertised measurements.
As for hardware, it turns out there is a pretty serious price range for barn door hardware. Price will vary based on material, size, and whether the track is open or closed. We opted for galvanized closed box rail and galvanized apron/wheel sets. This was the cheapest option and we love how the steel matches the rolling bar in the Florida room. It ended up being most cost effective to order the rail from one place and the wheel sets/aprons from another.

We used a circular saw (on loan from Kristen's dad) to cut the lumber. Now, I know what you're thinking. That was careless! It's hard to get accurate straight cuts and they tend to splinter the wood, right? Well, using a cutting guide adresses both of these concerns, and they're incredibly easy to make with extra wood lying around. Here's a video that shows how, and here's me going to town on some boards. Notice the Black & Decker work bench. This was a gift from my dad that has made nearly every project we've undertaken many times easier. Thanks Pops!


After cutting, I sanded down all the wood with a medium grit sandpaper wrapped around a wood block. I have a Dremel Multi-Max that would have been much easier, but the stupid thing stopped working randomly a couple weeks ago. If you're using nicer wood I would recommend using a coarse grain followed by a fine grain, but again, we didn't want our wood looking too nice. To clean the wood after sanding I used a couple pieces of tack cloth. This is the first time I've used tack cloth, and it's gross. DEFINITELY wear latex gloves when dealing with this stuff. It's basically cheese cloth coated in a very sticky substance that picks up all the sawdust off the wood after cutting/sanding. It works great though and you don't have to wait for the wood to dry like you would if you used a wet rag.

Next we laid out all the wood indoors and proceeded with priming. We used two coats of an oil based primer from Home Depot. Be careful with the oil based paints. I don't use them often and had forgotten how difficult it is to clean up if you spill some. Keep turpentine close on hand.

Cece likes the fumes.

Time to paint! As many of you know, Kristen loves yellow. If it were up to her we would drive school buses, eat Velveeta, and live on the surface of the sun. That being the case we decided on a shade of Behr Premium Plus semi-gloss enamel called "Sun Ray." It really pops and contrasts well with the black floor tile and grey rafters.

Two days and two top coats later we were ready to start putting the thing together. Stay tuned for Part 2 - Assembly!