Our shop reno has been on a tight budget. We needed a budget barn door.

We tried to upcycle and reuse where we could.

After finishing the inside of our bathroom on a budget (you can read about that here) we decided we needed to come up with a creative solution for a bathroom door. The old door swung into the tiny bathroom, which would not be practical when a few ladies were in there washing paintbrushes at the same time. We didn’t want it to swing out into the workshop area and we needed something that looked good as the bathroom door is the focal point at the end of the long room. We did plank the wall for some added interest, but we needed a door. We needed a barn door!

Then remembered we HAD a door…

This door was found upstairs in the attic of my shop. I brought it down and gave it a very good scrubbing and then leaned it up to see if it would fit. And it did. I played with colours and decided a pop of red would be awesome, and I wanted a layered old door look, so I painted it first with a coat of Miss Mustard Seed Ironstone as a stain. It soaked into that old door really well. I did a couple of coats to get it a little brighter, this photo shows what it looked like after 2 coats of Ironstone and I was just starting to apply a wash of Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint Trophy here and there on the door knowing I was going to put hemp resist and a full coat of Tricycle on the final layer. I just did a very very quick brush of the Trophy to give it some depth.

We were measuring for hardware and leaned it up against the wall for a bit.

At this point, we were still going to do it in Tricycle red (like the sample board) but we decided the red might be too much so we left it as it was. Rough painted and all…it looks pretty good though, it’s funny what happens when you are not “trying”. I hemp oiled the door and we added a chalkboard to the “window”.

Next up was hardware. We have never put up a barn door so were unsure about the hardware required. I found all kinds online for $250 and up. It was all beautiful. Lots to choose from, but the prices were really high.

My daughter has a horse and one day while at the barn (we spend a lot of time at the barn), I asked the owner where he buys his barn door hardware and he said the local farm store. (for you local peeps it is the Coop Farm Store). Well duh… that makes sense. To have an authentic barn door, let’s use authentic barn door hardware from a farm store. Pretty simple when you think about it. And the best news – the total cost was under $70!

I sent hubby to buy the hardware, it does not come in fancy packaging, it is not “fancy” and you need to know what you need as it is sold in pieces, but we figured it out and hubby came home with all the right pieces! Yippee!

As I mentioned we had not put a barn door up, hubby went along with my crazy idea and set about figuring it out.

We needed to put something behind the brackets to make the wall as wide as the moulding on the door and decide to use the same barn boards we used on our counter over the door. Then we (ok, HE) put up my door. I snapped pictures and held the door once in a while. It took him about an hour to put the door up – pretty good considering it was in pieces and we had not done it before!

We did have to do some tweaking after we installed it – we added a stopper on the top so it would not be slid too far, either way, a stopper on the floor to the right and we had to cut the rail off with a grinder at the top right. We also added some garage door moulding to the sides so privacy was not an issue as it juts out about an inch from the wall. The door works fab and saves us a lot of space, it has visual interest and is quite practical with the chalkboard (excuse the Christmas tree, I told you these are old pictures, oops). I must say we get a lot of questions on a daily basis about our barn door! 

Cost breakdown:

Door – found  – FREE

Barn wood – salvaged from our old deck – FREE

Hanging Hardware – Coop Country Store $70

Chalkboard insert – used hardboard we had and painted with chalkboard paint – FREE

Garage door moulding – leftover we found in our garage – FREE

You can see from the before and after that the white door really had no character and is a focal point of the room, we think the barn door has a bit more character!

Total install cost $70! 

Shop reno is pretty much complete now! We love our space and are so happy to have such a great landlord! She’s been so awesome about us making changes to the shop. We are happy to say we up cycled, re-loved, re-used and recycled a ton of things to make our shop reno happen! Thanks for popping by again today to check out our barn door install on a budget! What do you think, would you ever install a barn door in your house?

Have a fab day!

Wendy

*This blog post was updated in September 2021. Front Porch Mercantile is no longer a physical retail store and has grown into Front Porch Lifestyle. Now Wendy offers her services as a business coach to other creatives while continuing a blog more focused on living a creative life.