DIY Barn Door + PDF Plans

Tell all ya friends and neighbors!

Build your own DIY barn door, including step by step PDF plans! It’s a great budget friendly project, even if you’re a beginner woodworker

DIY Easy barn door with PDF plans graphic

I can’t believe we are almost there with this master bathroom refresh reveal! I feel like it’s been forever, but we’ve had lots of (fun) projects that I’ll be getting to share with you soon that have come up unexpectedly.

I’m sharing with you all today our DIY sliding barn door that is legit the easiest project even though it looks like it’s the most difficult. There are about 1.5 million tutorials for DIY rustic barn doors out there. Trust me. I’ve looked on Pinterest myself and they’re ERRYWHURR.

So, what’s different about our barn door? Come and see!

If PDF plans are easier for you to follow than a blog post, you’re in luck because I paid someone a lot smarter than me to make the PDF version of these DIY barn door plans.

They’re normally $12, but if you sign up for my email list, I’ll send you a code that makes them $4! Still will come in cheaper than buying the thing, I promise!

(Oh, and if you’re a salty white dude who thinks he’s owed something for free because I’m a woman, save yourself the email. Read the blog post then. I’m not changing my mind and if you don’t like it, you may show yourself out. Smooches!)

DIY Barn Door

This post may contain affiliate links which help me pay for things like web hosting, site security, email services and bottles of wine from Aldi when the aforementioned things aren’t working. They cost nothing for you, but help me continue to provide free content to you fine, beautiful people!

Supplies:

The reason I link to wood is because if you’re anything like me, sometimes the lumber aisle can be intimidating. So, by linking them, my hopes is that you can just place an order online at Home Depot or Lowes and go pick it up! Saving you some time! Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

Steps to building a barn door for yourself:

man with beard cutting lumber for DIY barn door

First, you’ll want to measure your own width of your door casing and height because all your measurements will change depending on that.

For reference, our door is 29 3/4″ x 84 1/4″.

Man cutting lumber with a saw for DIY barn door

Cut the boards to size.

Man cutting lumber with a saw for DIY barn door

We also needed to trim one of the boards that would be used for the sides of the door so that it would be the right width for our casing so here we used THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS TABLE SAW.

One of these days, we’ll have the money to get one that couldn’t so easily cut a limb off.

lumber laid out on hardwood floor with green Ryobi nail gun
man with beard nailing wood together for DIY barn door plans

Next, lock in your pieces of wood using the tongue and grooves. We also added a bit of wood glue in the grooves so that we could have a little bit of extra support.

Not like we’re going to be swinging or hanging on this thing, but still.

Lay your trim pieces on the left and right sides and use a nail gun to nail them on.

hand holding pine lumber for DIY barn door

You can see here this is the width of the barn door including the trim. It’s not thick at all so it’s also a space saver.

little boy in diaper walking on wood
little boy sitting on wood for a barn door

Don’t forget to use a small wild haired boy to test the weight limits of this budget friendly DIY project. Gotta make sure it’ll hold up under pressure.

clamps holding together boards for DIY barn door
man with beard using Ryobi nail gun for DIY barn door

Using giant clamps, slide in the trim pieces at both the top and the bottom of the door and nail them into place.

yellow measuring tape on wood

Measure your door from inside top trim to inside bottom trim to find the middle.

This is where you will put your 1×6 in the middle of your barn door.

man with beard adding wood glue to center piece of DIY barn door

Next, put wood glue on your piece of 1×6 and put in place.

Sanding and staining your DIY barn door

man in long sleeve gray shirt sanding DIY barn door

You’ll want to make sure you give your door a good once over with a power sander. You could totally do this by hand but let’s be real, why would anyone wanna do that if you ain’t gotta?

If you haven’t noticed, we have 90% Ryobi tools and for the most part, they’re great quality. I would say the Ryobi power sander is a great tool for the price – it’s under $50!

Varathane wood conditioner
man with beard and blue gloves applying Varathane wood conditioner to DIY barn door

This next step is optional, but we always like to put wood conditioner on our projects (like our DIY farmhouse table, our open shelving in our kitchen and our guest bathroom shelves).

It seems to let the stain soak in better and more evenly – whether you’re using pine boards or oak or whatever wood you prefer!

man applying stain to DIY barn door

Next comes time for stain! I don’t know if I ever want to use a different stain ever. I promise we’ve tried.

We have tried multiple stains on multiple different kinds of wood and we keep coming back to old faithful which is Minwax Early American.

Adding A Mirror To Our Barn Door

We had a full length mirror leaning up against our wall, but a certain one year old got buck one time and knocked it over and broke it.

So, we needed another solution. One that allowed us to have a full length mirror but not have it on the floor.

woman kneeling putting command strips on the back of a full length mirror
woman kneeling putting command strips on the back of a DIY barn door

This barn door is super easy to install with the barn door hardware we got so if you’re wanting to add a full length mirror like we did, add command strips on both sides of the mirror as well as the top and bottom.

woman hanging mirror on a DIY barn door smiling

Then make sure you’re insanely happy and hang that bad boy.

light pink full length mirror hanging on back of DIY sliding barn door

Is it weird that my favorite part about doing this DIY barn door with tongue and groove is how the back side looks beadboard?? I honestly didn’t know this is what it would look like but it does and I COULD NOT love it more!! It’s absolutely perfect!

Open and closed, I love it all!

DIY sliding barn door hanging up

Oh, just ignore the fact that our bedroom currently doesn’t have floors. More on that later 😉

pin now make later
DIY barn door plans and tutorial. We snuck a little something on the back side of this door you have to see! #DIYbarndoor #barndoortutorial

Similar Posts

55 Comments

  1. Thank you so much for sharing! We adjusted it a bit to make it more our own. But it was so helpful having yours to guide me!

    1. Well, then it’s good you don’t live here! We all get to make our own choices in our homes which makes it awesome to be a homeowner 🙂

  2. Excellent job and I appreciate you guys for sharing the step-by-step. It is absolutely gorgeous. I am currently living/ building a tiny house. I will be doing exactly what you just shared!! You ROCK!!

  3. Isn’t there a space between the wall and the door? How do you get it to sit tight to the opening so there are no spaces?

    1. It does, but the barn door hardware kit comes with a piece you screw in the floor so it basically is a small track for it so when it’s open it stays in that and it doesn’t move!

  4. The idea to add a full-length mirror actually blew my mind!! I’m hoping my husband will be willing to tackle this project for me. We just had our hardwood floors refinished in the guest bath and I think this wood barn door is the perfect thing to tie the room together. Thanks so much for sharing!

    1. Nope! We have done clear matte finish in some of our other wood projects, but not this one. Hope that’s helpful!

      1. Hi, I’m about to finish this same style door. I use conditioner and minwax polyshades on most of my projects. My question is do you use wood putty/filler in the little nail holes or do you just let it fly cause it’s rustic?

        1. This is a great question! We actually didn’t on this project! Most of the time we definitely fill nail holes and do all the things surrounding that, but you can’t even really see them! There were a few that we added some filler to if they were just too obvious, but for the most part, we didn’t! Thanks for asking and best of luck with your project!

    1. You would most likely need to change the dimensions to make sure it fits like a standard door first. It’s also pretty heavy so just check the weight limits on your hinges, but hey, it’s worth a shot! 🙂

  5. I can’t wait to make this!! What did you use to attach the track to? I’m planning on leaving the doorframe so I’ll need to add a piece of wood to the wall to put the track on. Just curious what y’all used for yours?

  6. Love your post and can’t wait to build these doors! I’m wanting bypass barn doors in my bathroom and have been searching for a diy option that was pretty on both sides. This is perfect!

  7. My husband just built this door using your instructions. It’s amazing!! Thank you so much. I’m wondering what you used on the bathroom side of the door to open the door. I can’t tell from your post. Thank you.

      1. Turn off mobile the form for the plans doesn’t show if on ipad or phone unless you go down to bottom of page and hit I think it’s called non amp version

  8. Just like you, I’ve spent hours looking at various DIY barn doors and this looks easiest to wrap my novice head around. I have all the materials and am excited for this. Curious, though, can you confirm adding wood glue into the grooves is what y’all did? Makes sense to me, but I want to make sure I’m doing everything right!

  9. For those asking, I’m making this door today and the materials are going to run me about $90 for the wood and about $75 for the hardware. This does not include stain and finish but I’m going to use the same that will be going on the floor. I could get a barn door made from MDF, with hardware, at my local lowes, for about $180 right now. Still a savings but not as much with wood prices like they are. I’m sticking with this style because I purchased the hardware a while ago but if you are starting with nothing and wood prices are still really bad, you may be better off with saving the time of building and finishing your own door and buying a premade one.

  10. Hi, so I made these for my bedroom about 6 months ago. They looked great when I finished. Now that winter is here I have a problem with them coming apart where I joined them and bending so that the wheels on the track have pressure on them. Do you have any suggestions?

    1. Unfortunately I don’t. I’m so sorry that’s happening! We have had no issues with either barn door we’ve built in our house and they’re both in bathrooms.

  11. Hey what stain did you use? I’ve been stuck on Special Walnut by minwax but love the color you used. Thanks

    1. Oooo, great question. The issue is with the price of lumber because of the virus has SKYROCKETED. I would hate to misquote. I will say it was WAY cheaper at the time to make it than to buy it.

  12. Looking into making our own barn door. Your guys looked amazing. How much did you guys end up spending to make the door (hardware included)? Looks beautiful!

    1. That’s a great question. I honestly wish I wrote it down, because I don’t remember. AND now that wood is priced SO HIGH right now because of the current state of affairs, I would hate to misquote. I will say for us it was significantly cheaper to build this than it was to buy it. I might suggest maybe taking the wood that we used and plug it into either your Lowes or Home Depot or other lumber store website to see what they’re currently charging to get a better estimate. Hope that helps!

  13. Love your design. Do you have more detailed instructions such as which boards you cut and the lengths etc? I am interested in making the same door with the same door measurements you referenced. Thank you in advance!

  14. Did you use a track (on the floor)? If so, how did you make the grove on the bottom of the door for the track?

    1. Not a full blown track, but the hardware we bought came with a piece you simply screw into the floor that acts as a catch for the door itself. Hope that makes sense!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *