*This post is about installing a sliding barn door
I would say I was a little late to the sliding barn door game. For quite some time I’ve envied and admired the sliding doors that I would see installed in houses on the HGTV home shows, or in the homes featured at the Parade of Homes. I just didn’t know if they’d work in our house or if I even had a location for it.
I did however have a door conundrum, a 3 door conundrum to be exact. These doors were quite a nuisance for us for a while. One is the bathroom, one is the pantry and one leads to the laundry room. Can you tell which is which? It starts to get a little annoying having to continuously point people to the restroom. A solution was certainly in order.
I purchased some plywood along with some plant brackets and rectified this situation pretty quickly.
All was well for quite some time
Sliding barn doors were not even a mainstream thing when I had my door conundrum. I don’t even think they were in existence in the manner that they are presently being used. We were good to go until many moons later when my youngest daughter found herself trapped and traumatized. We were headed out for an errand when she realized that she needed to run back in the house to go to the restroom. In the past this had never been a problem, but on this particular day it became one. While waiting for her in the truck, I heard her frantically scream. Needless to say I ran in and saw that she was trapped and couldn’t figure out how to free herself. You see the red circled area? The doorknobs had apparently interlocked and she had no idea.
After she recovered from that traumatic experience, I showed her how to get free should she find herself in this scenario again.
It Was Time To Find a Solution
After this bizarre incident occurred I couldn’t help but linger awhile pondering how to correct this. That’s when the idea of the sliding barn door entered my mind. Next step…figure out where they sell them and how to install one. My first thought was Lowes, though when I looked at the selection and the prices, I realized that was not going to be the place. From there I went to Amazon and that is where I purchased our new sliding barn door.
There were quite a few parts. Based on the paperwork, it looked simple-ish, so bit by bit I began to assemble it.
but measurements COMPLETELY overwhelm me. Honestly math completely overwhelms me. My husband was a numbers guru, I unfortunately am not. My fear is that I would measure wrong and the sliding barn door would somehow not fit appropriately. Fortunately my brother-in-law came to my rescue!
So now, using some gadgets we’d never used before, we were well on our way
Isley was certainly ready to jump in
Then we measured
and measured again
We looked for studs, might I add not so successfully
We leveled out the header board
Added the rail
I removed the old door, with help from a dear friend added the rather heavy new door, and was EXTREMELY THRILLED that my super measure whiz brother-in-law nailed the dimensions as the door fit perfectly.
Once the door handle and door stop were installed, we were finished!
This is SOOOOOO much better. Now there’s no more fear of getting stuck between two doors.
Yes, this is certainly a dance worthy accomplishment.
Thank you. My kids now know how to do this. Their doing the work for me hehehehh