We made some barn doors!

Skip to after

Before:

Ugly accordian doors:

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And this is one of the annoying issues. The closet was taken in a bit in order to expand the bathroom next to it, but this will was never brought up to flush so there’s part of the closet that’s just wall.
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Another quick (way) before shot, because we actually changed the main light fixture and added a second light fixture about a month before starting this part of the reno, this is the true before:
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The Process:


First things first, remove the moulding and existing framing for adjustment.
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Extending the wall:

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And then so much puttying:

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Phew. That’s mostly done. Now, onto the doors!

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Planing…
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So. Much. Sanding.
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Beveling

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Painting

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Test fitting

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What, you thought I was done puttying?
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All the pieces!

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Prepping for paint

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Cleaning
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Masking
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Painting some of the hardware
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First coat! Looking like a hallway again 🙂
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More hardware
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Doors assembled!
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Slight bow in the doors (Crappy plywood) hoping that letting the glue dry like this will help. (Spoiler alert, it did!)
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Second coat of paint on the doors, this hid a lot of the wood grain, but lesson learned. Next time we’ll go with a very colored stain instead or just do one really good coat of paint to keep the wood texture.
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More hardware…
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Getting ready for assembling the hardware!
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Assembling!
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Needs a little fine tuning, holes are big enough for it.
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Finding the studs and then drilling lots of small holes to make certain I find dead center, these 1/2″ lag screws HAVE to be centered.
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Success!
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Painting the backer bar
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Doors assembled!
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Robin’s reaction when she notices “dat gap”…..
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Everyone makes mistakes….I didn’t even consider this when designing it all.
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So the next day I started on a solution to surprise her. A friend gave me the advice “Express the hardware, don’t hide it”
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As it turns out, this looks frickin AWESOME. I had half a mind to redo all the brackets in this fashion, but eventually decided not to. I like it as a fancy flourish.
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And the final detail, the floor moulding! We found stain and moulding at HD that matched perfectly, yay!
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Now for the after

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Total cost came in around $400, but that’s including a lot of the wall stuff too, and some mistakes. Thanks April Wilkerson for the idea/proof of concept/plans/everything! Here’s her post about it: Wilkderdos.com