How To Install Barn Door Hardware

So if you have been following my home renovation journey (and believe me, it's been a journey) you would know we have slowly been working to improve our house, while adding bits of character along the way! 

So in our master bedroom we have an attached bathroom. Which is awesome. However we also have a skylight, and for some reason no doors, or even pocket doors to separate the master from the sinks. So during a storm, or really any day you might want to sleep in or take a nap, it's quite bright and loud. 

Instead of adding french doors, or paying who knows how much for pocket doors I don't even care for in most rooms, we came up with the idea for barn doors. Talk about character, and how could I pass up on the opportunity to make our home a little more "country chic?"

We had made the doors pretty close to when we moved in (don't worry, I'm making a huge one for our spare bedroom, so there will be a tutorial for that soon). However, to try to save on cost and effort, we used a pipe and wheels for the doors to roll on. Not taking into account that the carpet made the floor uneven, this was super noisy and difficult to open and shut them. But it still solved our light and noise problem, but not so great if we needed to get into the room while the other was still sleeping. 

Enter barn door hardware. So legit. Seriously should have used this from the beginning and next time we will!

First we figured out how long our rail needed to be. With having two doors, we wanted enough space for the doors to be able to open all the way on either side. This rail is 10 ft long. The wooden board underneath is one foot longer, at 11 ft. 

We went ahead and attached the anchors prior to spray painting, so as not to mess up the paint job. We used four of these on the rail to attach the rail to the wooden board. The wooden board is attached to the wall in the studs. 

These four clamps are used to attach the wheels to the doors. We used two clamps per door. It will be nice on our next door to need only two of these to cut on cost. I used this Rust-Oleum spray paint to give it s hammered metal look. Next I stained the wooden board the same color as the doors. 

So after letting all of that dry overnight, we started lining everything up with our doors. Here you see how the clamps line up with the top of the door. Prior to attaching these, you make sure that you attach the wheels with the extension screw. We were able to adjust the height of this by drilling into the top of the door about an inch to shorten the length of the screw exposed. 

Next attach the wooden board to the wall mounting it with at least 3 inch screws into studs in several places. We were able to located 5 studs and pre-drilling worked best. Then attach the rail using the pre-attached anchors, that you spaced out evenly prior to spray painting.

Please ignore my patch work and paint that is drying as we hang this. You can't see it now lol 

Last is attaching everything together. If you have measured correctly the doors with their wheel attachments should be just about and inch or two shorter than your railing. If not, you can drill your hole in the top of the doors a little more to shorten your extension screw.  If you measured right, simply slide your doors on! There are little end clamps that we put on either end to help keep the door from rolling off the rail, but honestly I doubt the door will ever go that far out. I just prefer the polished look of them. 

So that's it! Please ignore the quality of these finished product photos. The lighting was absolutely terrible, but you can see how cool it looks! So pleased on how it turned out! Can't wait to start on the spare bedroom!