How To Make A Barn Door Under $300?

Introduction

How to make a barn door?

Do you know most people use barn doors to make their homes stylish?

Barn doors are often used in most houses, and commonly house owners use them in the basement, washrooms, closets, bedrooms, and many other places.

These doors are also used to separate living areas and kitchens. You can make small baby gates for your pets. Barn doors provide excellent looks for your home and are suitable for smaller rooms and cottages. These barn doors are available as sliding doors instead of those space-taking swing doors.

You can easily find the best styles, like trendy simple white doors, traditional rustic doors, modern doors, and many others in the market. But, do you know the best part? You can make them at your doorstep for under $300. Isn’t that amazing?

So, first, let’s see the materials and hardware needed to make those barn doors for your daily use.

Required Materials & Hardware For Making 2 Shutter Barn Door

We suggest looking at the space where you will install this barn door. Once the place is decided, you can purchase the materials and hardware accordingly.

• 2 barn door hardware kits
• Finish nailer
• 2 sheets of ¾” MDF or plywood
• 1 ¼” finished nails
• 6 drilled 1 x 2” x 8’ boards
• 8 drilled 1 x 4” x 8’ boards
• Tape measure
• Clamps
• Wood glue
• Miter saw

In addition, the following materials and tools are needed to make sliding barn doors. Please take a look.

• Barn door hardware kit
• Brush or roller for poly
• 1 qt. Dark stain
• Angle grinders
• 40 1-½-inch wrought-head nails
• 12 1 x 6 x 8 ft. No. 2 pine boards
• ⅜-inch rabbeting bit
• Brush knot cup
• Standard DIY tools
• Router
• 1 qt. Gray stain
• 1 qt. Polyurethane 
• Know cup brush for grinder
• 2qts Light gold stain

So without wasting time, let’s check out how to make sliding barn doors and save your home space.

Let’s Start Making Barn Doors Yourself

Once you decide on the place and purchase the materials, one thing remains to do. Thus, we would like to provide you with the following guidance.

1. Start Measuring

The exact size of the area you want to install barn doors is essential. Thus, you should check out the door width. Also, consider the door height.

For example, if you make a standard door of 4-inch wide size, it would require 4 inches wide and 7 feet tall.

You can use the help of door makers and manufacturers to fit your door in the exact size, height, and width. You can quickly get your minimum door height by measuring to the top of an opening without trim or top to trim and reducing the measurement to ½-inch. However, don’t forget to leave sufficient space to place the sliding track for your doors.

2. Provide Track Supports

The track is another essential factor in installing your barn doors. So, make sure the track is mounted on the wall. You can use the following methods to mount your tracks.

Make sure you place the straight wood backing between covers at the height of the track. You can set the track mounting screws anywhere with the help of that. But remember this is not suitable for the finished room. For the installation of blocking, you need to remove the plaster.

You can start mounting the header boards on the wall surface for screwing to the sprinkle. After that, add screws between the header board and track and screw them tightly. In this method, your barn door weight should not exceed 75 lbs.

Lastly, you can bolt the track easily to the dot. But these methods need two things to do. First, you must order the undrilled track and make holes as per your choice. Second, tell your suppliers to add some supplements that don’t harm your walls.

3. Choose Spacers & Floor Guides

When you follow the best spacers and floor guides, you can see that some styles of spacers can keep your track away from the wall. These are the best choices if you need a space between a track and a wall. With that, your barn door can quickly move or slide. There is no need to buy them from any other sources, and they occurred with the hardware of a DIY barn door.

Remember that a few will send you the adjustable length spacers, and a few will provide you with different length spacers. However, you can decide the spacers’ length through your track mounting method. Also, ensure that you are getting the exact spacers you ordered.

4. Choose Rollers

The rollers are used in the barn doors to move them from one place to another. You can use the bracket, which can easily fit into the bottom door’s channel cut and mounted to the floor. Roller guides can help you if your doors don’t provide any channels. We still suggest choosing the rollers, which can be the best for your barn doors.

5. Build Shiplap Boards

You can use any shiplap boards, but for the beginning, it would be better if you chose inexpensive pine boards to make the shiplap boards. Make sure you purchase those boards that are straight and cupped or warped-free.

Now, the board width is used to separate the door width. After that, change the board width to get an equal door width.

The five inches are enough for the four feet wide doors. However, we suggest cutting down the boards with the correct width. Further, you have to cut the rabbets into two boards and edges.

Take one rabbet and cut it down on two boards to use on the outside edges.

You can cut the boards to the length you want to provide a stunning end look. Here you can make the vast blocks of three inches and horizontal rails, and it would be better if your door width is longer than two inches of the horizontal rails.

6. Use a Grinder To Give Beautiful Door Designs

You have to take the help of the angle grinder and mount the brush knot cup. After that, take a softwood and use an angle grinder to scour it. Make sure you get an elegant design at the end of the work.

First, finish nails to attach the sawhorse and board to keep it in one place. You will get the rustic advent with these nail holes.

Make your grinder sharp to keep the wheel on the cut and near the grain to wear away the soft wood. We suggest you protect yourself first because it can harm you as you face the dust. It would be better to use dust protection masks, goggles, and other things.

If you want a unique design on your boards, try wire wheels on the ends and edges. Use a flat surface of the panels to hold it, slowly move it, and make some saw marks. Although you run an angle grinder wheel incorrectly, you can get unique saw marks that may look excellent.

7. Making Wormholes

This is another option available to make your boards stunning and give them another excellent look. Start driving the wormholes by using the drill. However, ensure you are doing it properly because it is quite risky.

A screwdriver is the best option to drag on the boards and create these holes. Create some cutouts and dents using the hammer claws. However, it would help if you stopped making many holes. It can lose its authenticity and originality.

8. Do Stain Coating

Until now, our efforts will be useless if you don’t use the stain coating. The light gold will give you the authentic wooden feel to try it out. Apart from that, you can remove the extra stain if it is a rag. The mini roller can help you here to spread the paint all over. After finishing this task, you will see the wooden touch boards.

9. Give Dark Staining To Your Doors

After that realistic coat staining, it’s time to use the dark staining on the boards. The dark coating will look like a rocky stain and you can create random designs with the dark staining.

If you want some dark parts on those boards, you can create them with dabs of stains and streaks. Use a rag to remove the extra coating color.

10. Use Gray Stain For Final Finishing

Now the only thing remaining for coating is gray staining. You can make a thin layer of gray stain after completing the above two colors. However, you can also use this gray stinging on the edges and end of the boards.

It would be better if you start staining less consistently. Also, you can give another finish to these boards. The combination of light, dark, and gray will hit differently and provide an authentic look to your door.

After all these processes, you should wait for at least 8 to 10 hours or overnight before assembling it. Also, note that some stain color brands provide a better look to your doors.

11. Give Vertical Straps

Organize the vertical boards on a flat surface or a floor. Make sure that they are placed under the horizontal rail locations. Place your boards on the top and bottom with penny spacers.

Now confirm that the board’s ends are in their places and lined up correctly. If you want to ensure that your door is square, you can measure oppositely like you make a cross sign on the door. You can make changes over and over on the board’s position to get the exact measurements.

12. Fastem The Rails

It’s time to mark the rail heights on the door and use nails and construction adhering to join them. You can use any wrought-head nails, but we suggest using the 1-½ – inches wrought-head nails.

These nails come through slightly from the opposite side. You can shorten them by locking pliers and grinding off the tips on a bench grinder.

There is also one possibility to use a metal grinding wheel with your angle grinder machine to do the same.

After that, start making the sample holes near the rail ends and break the wood for nails. Further, if you want your rails to be more robust, you can add the screw head on the opposite side using the ¼-inches screw.

If you want more finishing, you can try to brush up your door with the polyurethane coating. But remember that you should test this brush-up finishing on a flat surface before applying it to the door, or else the doors will be of no use. And your efforts will never matter.

13. Start Marking For Hanging Holes

You are almost done with barn doors once you are done with the above processes. Your door hardware will provide instructions for installing hangers; you must follow them correctly. Now you have to mount door hangers with the door once you are done with marking and drilling holes to hang the door.

14. Set The Track

Setting up the track on the walls depends on your chosen track support. You can use the pre-drilled track and the process over it with bolts only if you have used the header board to mount on the track. Also, you can use the same pre-drilled track if you set up the straight, constant backing between studs.

If you have drywall and want to mount the track, you need to find the dots and mark them. After that, don’t forget to shift your fleck locations on track to make holes drilled in the exact place. Ensure that instructions include the height-deciding formulas.

Lastly, we want to suggest checking your dimensions, measurements, and math to mount the track. It will help assure you that you don’t need to make any effort if all the work has been done correctly.

15. Final Steps: Hang Your Door

That’s all you have to do before hanging your DIY door here. When you finish the track mounting, the last thing is to keep your door on the track, and that’s it.

However, it would help if you decide on the stopping place after rolling on every end. Check out the instructions and mount end tops, bottom guides, and remaining hardware appropriately.

So, finally, you can take a deep breath because your efforts made that happen. You created and set up the barn door without anyone’s help.

Conclusion

How to make a barn door? 

When your home is small, you always try to add new ideas and make your home spaces sufficient for your use. Aren’t we correct?

That’s why you try to make many changes from your bedroom to basements, bathrooms, study rooms, and more. At the same time, you want to give your home a modern touch. That’s why one of the best things you can do is install barn doors for many uses like closets, bathrooms, and others.

This will help you separate the rooms you want and make more space. There’s no need to purchase it from the other side. You can easily make this at your home. There are some easy steps provided in this article you can follow and make your barn door without someone’s help.

So we hope you will create stylish barn doors with the help of this article. Please comment if you need assistance; our team will guide you there.

FAQs

1. What Is A Barn Door?

Previously, these doors were installed on the barn of the home’s exterior, and these sliding doors were installed only on the exterior side of the house. However, now because of the evolution and different types, you can easily find them inside and outside the home.

2. What Are Included In Barn Door Hardware Kits? 

Barn door hardware kits are available online at less than $100, and you can order them. Single rail bypass, single door, double rail bypass, and double door on the single rail without bypass are some of the things included in barn door hardware kits.

3. How To Determine The Width Dimensions Of The Door? 

First, determine the door overlay and the opening side of the door. It would be better to choose 2 inches of door overlay on every side, which is the regular size, and then finalize the door opening width dimensions.

4. Why Is The Header Board Needed? 

A header is commonly used to mount the tracks for the finished look. Also, it helps to disperse the system weight appropriately. In addition, it will protect drywall from crushing on large or heavy door installations.

5. What Things Should You Consider Before Installing A Barn Door? 

A few things you should consider before buying a barn door. The hardware quality, the same space & width dimensions, handles, and other essential factors according to your home or space you want to install.

6. What Is The Ideal Clearance Gap You Should Keep Between Wall And Door? 

Due to its different styles and colors, it looks better in smaller houses and saves space. Still, you should keep a 1-inch space empty between a wall and a door.

7. Can Barn Doors Drop Off Track? 

The barn doors are commonly hung on the tracks, and there might be a possibility that they can drop off the tracks accidentally.

8. What Do Bottom Guides Do? 

Bottom guides are required for the barn doors, and it does not let your barn doors come out off the track and protects them from swaying.

9. Can A Barn Door Track Hold The Door Weight Of 800 Lbs? 

Today, the tracks have many weight capacities to handle any barn door. Thus, the capabilities of weight range between 1,000 lbs or more (Heavy), between 400 kg to 1,000 kg (Medium), and under 400 kg (lightweight).

10. How Much Should Be The Thickness Of Your Barn Door Hardware Tracks?

The barn door hardware track thickness should be at least 1 ¾-inches, which will benefit the dimensions of the standard panel.