After Mario and I built our home, one of the first things I wanted in our house was a sliding barn door. There was never an immediate need or an ideal place in the house for us to install one, so the barn door was not a priority. Fast forward five years, and a handful of dogs later, the double glass doors to my office had taken a beating. Our dogs had chewed and clawed the wood apart, and opening and closing the doors became a real pain because they constantly got “stuck” and we were having to slam the doors to get them to shut.
So when the hub offered the idea of putting up a barn door for my office, you can bet I jumped on that right away!
At first, I resisted to the hubs’ suggestion of repurposing the old office doors into the “new” barn doors, but I’m so glad I caved! With a little bit of work, and a weekend’s worth of time, we ended up saving money by customizing the existing doors, and now I have something I absolutely love!
Our goal with this project was to spend as little as possible. After removing the doors, the door frame was left with large screw holes and rivets where the door hinges once lived. To fix this, we removed the door stop and installed a wide piece of flat trim over the imperfections. Any remaining holes were filled with silicone.
The old doors also needed some adjustments to make them work as sliding doors. In their original form, the doors were too short and needed some width to cover the doorway. We added a 2×4 to the bottom of the doors to give them some height, and added some trim to the sides to widen them a bit.
The deep scratches caused by the dogs in the back side of the doors were filled with wood bondo, and the damaged trim around the glass sections were removed and replaced.
Once the doors were prepped and sanded, I taped off the windows and prepared them for paint. To be honest, as I was painting, I was a little worried I wouldn’t be happy with the color. Once the paint dried and the doors were hung, I was really pleased with the results!
These doors are one of the first things you see when you walk into our house. I really enjoyed working on this project and couldn’t be happier with the way they turned out.
Sources:
- Door Color // Sherwin Williams – Peppercorn
- Sliding Barn Door Hardware // Amazon
- Barn Door Handle Pull Set // Amazon
- Flooring // Home Depot – Montagna Rustic Bay tile
- Desk // IKEA BEKANT corner desk
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House of Alarcon 