barn doors.

I've been talking for awhile about a plan I had to mask those ugly sliding closet doors in our new dining room. We didn't want to get rid of a closet for a few reasons. For one it helps in resale and for two we already took over the office closet for the desk space.

So I decided to embrace them and turn them into barn doors.

And yes, I had to lay upside down on the floor to take this picture. But it's all about getting that cool angle right?

So basically what we did was remove the sliding doors and attach cedar click together paneling to them with liquid nails. I debated on going horizontal or vertical but vertical won out. Less cuts, less gluing, adds height to the room and not as busy.

They sell the cedar at both Home Depot and Lowe's different brand names but same stuff. We needed 3 packages total. Each package had 14 square feet and cost about $20. Since the doors are hollow core we couldn't use nails as they would have nothing to hang on to and I didn't want all those little holes.

So we measured and measured again and cut and clicked them together then put the glue on the door and transferred the new top onto the door and clamped it down so we were sure it stuck on there really well!

Here is a close up of the cedar. Not only does it smell good it has a great natural texture to it as well. I thought I was going to put a clear coat over it but I decided I wanted to keep it all natural. I won't mind if it gets beat up and worn over time. I was trying to emulate barn doors after all.

Now onto the hardware. I wanted industrial, outdoorsy looking stuff so I picked up these handles. They are much easier to grab and pull as opposed to those silly circle handles these doors usually have.

The only adjustment we had to make was moving the sliding track back about a half an inch. We had to allow for the thickness of the cedar so the door would continue to open & close smoothly. Here is my picture diagram showing you want I mean for all you visual people out there like me!

The end result.

And because everyone likes a good before & after comparison: