the barn door debacle

Posted on by Lauren Zerbey

The barn door concept started out as a way to further maximize our house’s efficiency while creating an interesting layer of functional texture (I just came up with that architect-speak on the spot!). Anyway, unlike a swing door, a sliding door doesn’t take up extra floor space when it’s in the open position (the same is true for pocket door). Our original design idea began with a horizontal track down the entire length of our house and a series of “moveable walls” separating the “public” and “private” spaces, giving us the ability to reconfigure the flow of the house with the push of a door. We even designed the openings so that the doors would feel composed whether they were in the open or closed position.  After making the call to add the loft and adjacent “light well” over the basement stairs, we decided to stop the barn door track and preserve a large blank space of white wall for a TBD piece of art. [Kyle is in love with the work of Cassandria Blackmore, a local Seattle/San Francisco artist who composes color behind shattered glass.]

During our SketchUp design phase, we modeled the barn doors as wood (vertical grain fir) but have since decided that 1) maybe we have enough fir in the house and 2) the doors would be expensive, especially for the oversized pair of doors at the flex room, which need to be close to 3′-6″ each.

Then we had a brilliant idea. What if we made a door frame from welded steel pieces, with a MDF core that could be painted? It would look awesome and we’d save a ton of money!

Or maybe not.

Barn door FAIL! Well, in all fairness this is just the skeleton of the trial door. The steel frame would have been painted dark gray to match the track and a layer of fresh 3/8″ MDF would have been glued to each side and painted in a vivid color. Maybe something like this… 

…and really, it is a cool door but it was too fussy and took WAY TOO LONG to fabricate. The frame was composed of back-to-back angles on three sides and back-to-back channels on the leading edge, providing a comfortable finger hold to operate the door from either side. The MDF core was dadoed on all four sides to fit over the interior flange of the steel frame and had to be installed before the final leg of the frame could be welded in place.

Are you overwhelmed yet? Yeah, us too. We were so thrilled with how the loft ladder turned out that we dove straight into welding up these doors. But the reality was that the design was too precise and the steel shapes so small that it just wasn’t the right solution. Also, the door was ridiculously heavy (and hard to operate, even without the two layers of MDF that still needed to be added) and the fact that this is the smallest of the four doors wasn’t a comforting thought. So we left the door in place for a week or so while we came up with version 2.0 (hey, at least we had a bathroom door in the interim!).

Another problem with the steel/MDF doors was that what started out as an inexpensive door was slowly getting pricier and pricier with each revision (for instance, we were now using three sheets of formaldehyde-free MDF per door). So we simplified. One thing that changed about our thought process since that first SketchUp model was the idea of painting the doors (inspired by Mad Men). This freed us to use a solid core door, but in a less expensive paint-grade option instead of the VG fir veneer.

Bam! We have just the bathroom door up now and despite the stock off-white color, it’s already a better solution (and much easier to operate).

With the magic of Photoshop, I started exploring color options…

Teal?

Blue?

Mustard yellow?

We also had a lot of husband and wife discussion about hardware and ergonomic door operation (uh, that’s normal right?). We’re thinking that a recessed door pull on each side is the way to go – modern and minimal but functional and comfortable.

Naturally, we like this ridiculously expensive pull from FSB. They’re spring-loaded which means they stay flush when not in use and the inner plate pushes in when in operation. Sexy! But at $70-$80 each…times 8…yeah.

Our second choice and more realistic pick are these recessed pulls from Linnea. They’re still not cheap and range from $24-$60 each. [We love the one on the left as it provides a place for your palm so the door doesn’t get smudgy.]

 

We also checked out Reveal Designs (bottom left), but it didn’t really do anything for us and it’s likely the price tag is higher than the similar Linnea version. The image on the right is also from FSB and is super hot but it looks ultra expensive and more complicated to install (though we dig the two-sided operation it provides).

So that’s where we’re at with this whole process. We felt good enough about the paint grade solid core doors that we ordered the remaining three last week. We’ll also share some details on how we attached the rollers at the top of the door and added a recessed aluminum track to the underside of the door for smoother operation.  As for colors, we’ll probably do a few more Photoshop studies and then paint on a few samples once the doors are in place. The good news is that paint is pretty non-committal so we’ll probably just go with the ol’ trial and error route. We even talked about having two sets of doors that are in different colors that we can change out depending on our moods or the time of year. I’m fairly sure that this is an extremely low-priority idea, but it could be fun – like a Swatch watch for our house.

 

22 thoughts on “the barn door debacle”

  1. Did you have any issues with the door hitting the bottom wall trip or the door frame? My wife and I have been considering this option but have concerns about the bottom of the door swinging and hitting the wall.

  2. It looks so much cleaner without the welded frame on the door – much more in keeping with your aesthetic. And a door that is hard to operate would be frustrating on a very base level, upping your stress every time you had to use it. Great solution (as usual!).

  3. B ramick, no issues there but we did use a floor guide. I cut a groove into the bottom of the door and inserted an aluminum channel to slide smoothly over the floor guide. The floor guide is a small black plastic piece about 1 inch wide that is screwed into the floor on the right side of the door so you don’t see it when the door is open or closed. We did adjust the track at top to be 1/4″ further out from the wall so the doors wouldn’t hit the baseboard trim.

  4. agreed, those steel frame doors were a nightmare, it was a low point in the remodel after spending a whole weekend fabricating it, installing it around midnight and then being hit with the realization that it’s not the right solution! lesson learned

  5. I’m surprised by the standard width door/frame – from your earlier descriptions and wanting the living room to flow in to this room I expected a double-ish size door, to which the barn door would have been a fun closure solution. As it appears, it’s a huge bit of infrastructure for a single door.

    Don’t mean to sound negative – just my thoughts, everything else you post here is amazing. I’m drooling from just a few blocks away. : )

    Cheers!
    Jon

  6. Hey Jon,

    There are two 3′-6″ doors for the flex room, so it’s still a pretty wide opening (if that’s what you’re referring to). We definitely like the idea of the flex room as an extension of the living room, but the main goal was for it to be a potential 2nd bedroom so this was a comfortable compromise between “open” and “closed” and to get the most use out of our spaces. Right now if feels like a nook off of the living room which is pretty cool.

  8. Given your CAD expertise, have you considered designing a pull yourself, using something like emachineshop.com for fab?

  9. Matt,

    had no idea that existed, thanks, this is very tempting. I was going to order the linnea pulls today but now I’m going to think about it. Thanks for the tip. -kz

  11. I agree with Matt that you definitely have the skill to design and manufacture it yourself. When I was first pulling up the pics of the door pulls, I thought one of them was a channel that ran down the entire side of the door. I thought ‘how cool’ as sometimes I dislike an inset pull that looks like it is floating in a pocket or sliding door. A possibility as the channels would be offset from one another interior and exterior of bathroom.
    I also will echo John from above that I expected the door to be more over sized to opening, but that could also be perspective of the photo.
    To purchase one, I would definitely head towards the Linnea. Great work!

  12. Drasylve, thanks, we did order the Linnea, should have them tomorrow! We thought they were the best design and price, I’m looking forward to using e-machine shop for something though! Our original design was to have inset and offest aluminum channels just as you mentioned, The photo of the door above is of the smallest door, which is for the bathroom at only 2′-6″. The flex room opening will have 2 doors that are 3′-6″ for a 7 foot wide opening. also I don’t think lauren had the doors open all the way when she took the photos.

  13. I just discovered your blog tonight (via Apartment Therapy) and am so impressed with your work so far. I just have a quick question about the use of a barn door for a bathroom – what about privacy? Can you get a good seal on a barn door for an appropriate barrier for bathroom sounds and smells? (ahem…)

  15. I was going to ask the same thing, but just about the locking mechanism, ha ha. But that is a great point: how good is the, erm, insulation/isolation of the door?

  16. Good points on the sounds and smells of bathroom door design. We designed for a minimal gap between the barn door and the wood frame and threshold of 1/8″ and have though about adding a felt closure strip but want to see how it goes first. To get the consistent 1/8″ and to keep the door from banging against the wall we had to install a floor guide. The floor guide is attached to the floor and the bottom of the door has a slot cut in it to guide the door along the guide.
    Most swing doors have a undercut at the bottom of the door ranging from 1/4″ to 3/4″, most are around 1/2″. We haven’t had any issues with smell but we also have a really good bathroom ventilation fan by panasonic. I have had clients who have asked for loud bathroom ventilation fans to mask, ahem “noise”. Ironically most of the bathroom fans on the market are designed to be super quiet pulling around 80 cfm (cubic feet per minute)

  19. Nice job.. and process. We have a couple of pocket doors in our house and went with the last image for the pull on the page (the two sided operation one). However, with teh $150 price tag per pull I had some stainless laser cut and welded by a family member. Ended up with 2 pulls for $40.. really cannot go wrong.

    Finished door looks great too. I am waiting until the nice weather to finish up a sliding barn door into our bathroom (or perhaps start) – we’re going with solid wood frame with a double skin poly carbonate vision panel.. should be interesting to see how it comes together.

  20. Great Job, I was wondering where you sourced the door track hardware from? I’m having a hard time finding a look I like.

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