Barn Door

Paolo Pozzi builds a rustic-style door for a gazebo

Table of Contents
Wooden door with glass panel in rustic kitchen

Having recently built a wooden gazebo, I needed to insert an external sliding door as a closure and I thought of creating a barn door. This type of rustic door is frequently used inside houses, either as a partition between one room and another or as a closure for a storage room. It has an external track and two pulleys and can replace a classic door very well, without having to carry out masonry work. Barn doors take up little space, even when the door is open; the only fundamental requirement being a portion of the wall on which to slide it. They are also very simple to build, even for newbie woodworkers like me, who are just discovering this wonderful world of woodworking.

The design

The finished door’s height is 1,930mm and its width is 800mm. In the upper part, to give extra light and visibility inside the room, it has a plexiglass plate. In the lower part, a panel will be made with interlocking beads with a section of 150 x 25mm.

The construction of the frame starts from 120 x 48mm cross-section pine and uses half-housing joints joint in the two crosspieces (lower and upper) of the door, while for the central crosspiece a half-housing corner joint is used

PlanDownload
Circular saw blade with a measuring square.
1. Before starting to cut, I always check the mitre saw blade is cutting square using a 90° square
Person cutting wood with a circular saw
2. After these checks, I cut the five pieces to the size to make up the frame: two beams at 1,930mm long and three beams at 800mm long
Hand measuring wood with a metal square tool.
3. Once the cuts were complete, I marked up the frame components which determine the half-housing joints. Starting from each end, I crosswise marked the width of the joists (120mm) and half the thickness on the edge
Hand drawing pattern on wooden block with pen
4. With the help of a square, I completed the joint markings and defined the waste portion with squiggly lines
Hand drawing line on wooden plank with pen.
5. To mark the uprights, I kept the pieces together and well aligned
Table saw blade height gauge close-up.
6. I then moved to the saw bench, and using a depth measuring tool, set the height of the blade for the cuts. When making this type of joint, you can use different electric tools (bandsaw, tablesaw or router): choose the ones you think are most appropriate, or those you have available

Preparing the frame

Cutting wood on a table saw safely
7. After making the first cut for the width of the joint, I weakened the waste part by making a series of close parallel cuts
Wood carving with mallet and chisel tools.
8. I then moved the pieces to the workbench and broke the strips produced by the cuts as much as possible with a wooden mallet
Person chiselling wood in workshop.
9. With the aid of a chisel, I levelled and finished the new surfaces
Wooden planks and tools on workbench.
10. These procedures were repeated for all the frame pieces

Dry assembly

Hand measuring wood with metal ruler on workbench.
11. Now it was time to dry assemble the frame. I placed the pieces on a sufficiently large and well levelled work surface and arranged the frame to obtain a perfect rectangle. I checked the squareness of the joints using a 90° square
Woodworking table with tools and measuring tape.
12. I also checked the diagonals of the frame; if the assembly was squared they would all be the same length
Wooden door frame being constructed in workshop.
13. Here you can see the dry assembly of the frame

Adding bolts

Steel bolt resting on wooden surface.
14. To make the structure more solid at the joints, in addition to gluing it (I used an aliphatic glue like Titebond Original), I decided to insert carriage bolts
Wood plank with drilled holes and alignment lines.
15. To ensure that the bolts did not protrude from the opposite side of the frame, I used a 20mm Forstner bit to create shallow recesses which served as a housing for the washer and nut
Woodworking table with clamps and tools
16. Once the drilling was complete, I proceeded to gluing, an operation which, thanks to the presence of the bolts, only required a few clamps

Bead-stop and glass-stop frames

Wooden planks forming a tabletop structure.
17. Once the glue was set, the nuts and bolts were removed to enable the subsequent processes. The first of these was creating the four bead- stop and glass-stop frames that will be used for the lower and upper part of the door. They were all created with rounded strips, with a 45° angle at the corners, to be fixed with glue and nails to the frame. I started with one of the two lower frames …
Wooden table frame on floor under construction
18. … then inserted the beads and fixed the one on the opposite front
Wooden frame on grey flooring close-up
19. At the top I fixed one of the two, the other would be added only at the end along with the plexiglass plate

The pulleys

Person marking wood with a pencil and guide.
20. The next step concerned the assembly of the two pulleys that allow the door to slide on the track against the wall. I followed the dimensions indicated by the manufacturer to locate the drilling points …
Electric drill making hole in wooden board.
21 … then drilled the door for the bolts

Final assembly

Person adjusting sliding door hardware on wooden frame.
22. The assembly was completed by fixing the pulleys with nuts and bolts and inserting screws in the joints
Person assembling door with sliding mechanism
23. I hammered the screws into the holes, using a scrap piece of wood on their heads so as not to damage their finish. I could then test the sliding on the track
White door with orange wall and plants inside.
24. And here is the result. A simple job that will not fail to give satisfaction!

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAOLO POZZI/LEGNO

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