How to Build a Sliding Barn Door in 30 Minutes

If you’ve ever built a house, you know there are always things you wish you would have done differently. In our current house, one is putting a regular door going into our toilet room in the master bath. It was always in the way when open. The solution: take it down, and replace it with a sliding barn door. Not only did it solve the problem, but it added another element of visual interest to the room.

I designed this barn door to be visually sleek and modern. Which means fewer pieces and cuts, and that means easier to build. I was able to build this one in about 30 minutes.

Here’s how I did it:

 Materials and Tools

• brad nailer
• 1″ brad nails
• primed boards: 1×6, 1×4, and 1×2 (got mine from Home Depot)
• tape measure
• air compressor
• wood glue

Get Measurements

The first thing I did was measure the door opening. The opening was 24.5″ x 96.5″. Keep in mind that your barn door should be about 1/2″ to 3/4″ taller than your opening. And it should be about 4″ to 5″ inches wider. This will give you a couple of inches of overlap on your trim and help create more privacy.

The problem with 8ft tall door openings like ours is that you can’t really use 8ft long pieces of trim, and in this case, for a barn door. But to avoid having a ton of waste from using 12ft pieces, I went with 8ft pieces any way. To get the extra height, I decided to put a piece of 1×2 going around the sides and top. Doing this also hid the crack on the sides.

Build the Door

The first thing I did was layout my 5 pieces of 1×6 boards side by side butted up against each other. I didn’t have to cut any of these pieces, but if your opening is not 8ft, you will need to measure and cut accordingly. I added a little bit of wood glue between each piece to give the door stability.

Then I measured the width and cut the top cross trim piece from the 1×4.

I applied some wood glue to the back of this piece.

And nailed it into place. I try to use as few nails as possible in this type of project. Less nails means fewer holes to fill and sand. I repeated these steps for the bottom cross trim piece.

Then I measured the distance between the top and bottom trim pieces. And used this length to measure and cut the side trim pieces from the 1×4’s.

I used the same glue and nailing process on the side pieces.

Once I had the face of the door trimmed. It was time to do the edge trim. Using the length and width measurements of the door to this point, I cut the edge trim pieces. The top piece was cut on a 45 degree angle on both ends. The side pieces were cut on a 45 only on one end.

Once I had all three pieces cut, it was time to glue and nail them into place.

And that’s it! A barn door in 30 minutes. It only required a total of 8 cuts.

Of course, once you have it constructed, you will need to fill the holes, sand and paint it, and hang it. To hang it, you can follow the instructions found in the barn door hardware kit you choose.

Here another shot of the completed barn door in our master bathroom.