Building a Rustic Barn Door

Design and Fabrication

In this episode, I build a rustic-style barn door for my client’s Denver home. I used authentic barnwood reclaimed from a 100-year-old barn. The client loves the gray-weathered look. To create the door, I made a welded steel frame to hold the barn wood. This was a great way to create a custom door.

Summary

Creating a Reclaimed Wood Door With Steel Frame

Brian discussed his process of creating a reclaimed wood door. He sourced the wood from a salvage business. He started the build by cutting it to rough length. To avoid pencil marks on the beautiful weathered barnwood, he used blue tape to mark the locations of the dominoes. He glued the wood pieces together in smaller sub-assemblies before assembling them into a complete door. To prevent bowing, he used an F-style clamp. He then cut steel to length and mitered the corners, grinding a bevel along the miter for a seamless finish. He welded flanges on the back to hold the wood in the frame and marked bolt locations using a drill bit. He performed a test fit of each bolt to ensure smooth operation of the door.