Easy DIY sliding barn door

I knew when we bought this rustic house three years ago that I had to find somewhere to add a sliding barn door! The tricky thing about adding a sliding barn door is that you have to have wall space at least on one side of your doorway. Because of this I wanted to DIY a sliding barn door so I could customize it.

And surprisingly in this very large house of mine, there isn’t a lot of wall space near a doorway as funny as that sounds. Although there is one spot that I knew I could make this sliding door work. My office! So interestingly enough when it came down to plan out our office renovation I used the sliding barn door as my pillar inspiration for the whole design! Here I’ll show you how you too can make your own easy DIY sliding barn door.

Sliding barn door hardware

Making a DIY sliding barn door is pretty easy. We bought the hardware from Walmart. It had great reviews and only came in at around $50! The hardware couldn’t have been easier to install. Literally, just connect and drill to the wall. Creating the barn door took a little bit more effort, but nothing too complicated!

Material for sliding barn door

We had all the wood in the barn that we needed to create the barn door for my office. We ended up using 5 1×6-inch boards. So for us, it was really just finding a barn door style we liked and then recreating it.

I’m always drawn to a more simplistic design so I wanted straight boards and a z pattern. We cut the wooden boards to size and ran them through a planer.

Then my husband assembled the boards by length and then attached two boards going across the top and bottom and screwed them together. Then he ran a board diagonally across connecting the top and bottom board making a z.

The great thing about making a wooden barn door is you want them to look more on the rustic side – so no need to go crazy with filling in all the screw holes! Although we did run some caulk along the lines of the board were you could see right through.

Paint color for DIY sliding barn door

I went with my absolute favorite paint color on the outside of the door. It’s from the home depot called Little Black Dress from Behr paint.

It’s a soft black paint color but has this beautiful navy blue undertone! I have it in fun little spots all over my house. For the inside of the door, I painted it off white from Glidden.

That’s the color of the walls on the inside of my office. I wanted the peek-a-boo of the door which you’ll only see when the door is shut to look like an extension of the wall and not a random pop of color in the wall. If that makes sense.

Installing the sliding barn door

Hanging the door in our old 300-year-old home was a little more tricky. For most people, it will be as simple as drilling hole and attaching the bolts and tightening everything up.

For us – we have to hang things a little on the crooked side to give the appearance that things are straight and level. It took a little jimmy rigging, but we got it up and it “looks straight” to us! Which is all that matters!

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Thanks so much for reading along, pals!

Much Love,

Kori ~ From The Farmhouse Life