A barn door at that. I’ve let the secret out that I have a barn door obsession. My hope was to have it be the large door that would slide open for access to the storage/utility room. This didn’t happen mainly because there were baseboards for the heat on either side of the door so the door wouldn’t be able to slide left or right. Not to mention that the bigger the doorway, the heavier the door. 

This left me looking around the room at what other doors I had to get this look. I had one more normal sized door that wasn’t a closet and that was the door to the laundry room. I was hoping to get a look like the door below.

A simple door on a black track. I knew the hardware was expensive, but this door would serve as a type of artwork for the room. Right off the bat we ran into a few problems. First of all the height above the doorway was not enough to install the track and the wheel hardware. Instead of spending almost $400 on the typical barn door hardware we settled on a simple track system from Home Depot for about $40. This hangs over the doorframe and will be hidden by a wooden valance which will come down and meet flush with the bottom of the door frame. The door slides to the left and has a bumper as well as a guide roller along the bottom. 

The door itself was constructed out of pine boards. I went back and forth as to how I’ll be finishing this off. I love the bold colors of some of the barn doors I’ve seen on Pinterest. I decided against choosing a color since it would dictate how I designed this room from here on out. I then contemplated white but decided that wouldn’t have enough contrast with all the board and and batten going on around the door. I then found a whitewash stain from Minwax called White Wash Pickling. It is hard to see in the sample below but it has a blue gray tone to it. The grains of wood are visible through it and it will contrast nicely with the white board and batten as well as the faint blue gray laundry room behind it.

Here is what we have so far. The valance as well as the staining haven’t been done yet. The valance will hide whatever steel hardware is visible now. I’ll also be adding a handle to the outside of the door on the right side.

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I couldn’t resist shutting myself in the laundry room to see how it looked closed. I’ll be doing another project in here to tie the door and the laundry room together a bit more. 

So the barn door that I’ve planned on and hoped would make it into this basement has arrived. This doesn’t mean I’ll stop adding to my barn door Pinterest board. It just means I’ll add my own to the group.