How to build a sliding barn door

I looked at all types of design ideas for this door.  I wanted the man cave to have an “industrial” feel, and most of the pictures I found reminded me of an old barn.  I do love the farmhouse look, however not in this space.

There are 4 doors in the man cave (all of them different – arrgh!)  So I had an idea to at least make two of them similar!  I ordered the sliding door hardware off of Amazon.  It came in a brown finish and I really wanted black, so I spray painted it.

Supplies needed:

• Door hanging kit
• 7 – 1x4x8 pine boards (we added one behind the door hanger to allow for the width of our door and trim around the opening)
  
• 6- 6ft tongue and groove pine boards
• table saw
• nail gun
• Kreg jig
• stain (I used pecan) and brushes to apply (remember I buy cheep and toss when done!)
  
• black paint (you will see why)
• rag
• hanging hardware
• handle

We added a 1×4 behind the hanging hardware kit to allow for the additional width of the door and opening trim.  This also allowed us to anchor the hanging hardware to something solid.  The kit is metric so it didn’t line up with the 16″ on center studs in our home.  By placing the 1x4x6 up first, we could secure this to the studs, then add the hanging hardware where we needed it. 

Building the door:

We have learned over the years of our DIY projects that we are not always the best at measuring!  Never fails, we cut twice and it is still too short!  So this time we decided to lay out the door, measure what we have, determine what we needed and only cut once! (hopefully) We knew we had 78″ from the top of the rail to the floor and the Dog House opening is 36″ wide.

We measured again and cut the boards to size, laid them out again and measured AGAIN! <– it worked!

To assemble the door, we used the Kreg Jig.  (an amazing little tool!)  Check it out!

Now for stain.  I used a pecan colored stain and then black wash (similar to white washing, but I add black watered down paint to “age” the wood).

Here is how:

I apply the stain using a “cheap” brush and toss when done!  You can wipe off excess stain if you want.  Once the stain is dry (usually over night) I apply the black wash.  I apply a dry brush of black paint to the surface first, if it is too dark, I dip the brush in water and apply a watered down version, then wipe the wood with a rag. I repeat this process until I have the wood darkened to my liking.

We added the door hanger/rollers to the top of the door at the correct height (pretty sure we measured like 10 times!), allowing enough room for the rail.  Next we needed to remove the door stoppers from the rail so we could slide the door on the rail- we adjusted them after we had the door hung so the door will stop at the right spot.

EEEKKK – I almost peed myself when the door was finally hung – I love, love, love it!!! 

YUP!  That is Mike’s chair in the man cave – equipped with cup holders.  It is the ONE piece of furniture that I let him pick out all by himself.