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!