Just before the holidays last year, we stopped all the work on the kitchen, pulled up the drop cloths and decided to take some time off from the renovation.
After the holidays I was sick for a month straight and spent the next month or so after that, making up for lost time.
That brings us to last night!
I decided I wanted to get started on our sliding doors again. Basically, I was tired of looking at one of the doors leaning against the wall in the dining room. Lol
Above is a shot of the doorway, leading to the kitchen, before we renovated the dining room and widened the doorway x2 (to the left). As you can see, the kitchen was very cut off from the dining room.
We increased the size of the doorway because the kitchen is small and everyone piles into it during the holidays, etc., making it difficult to move around in. Our hope was that some would flow out to the dining room but still feel a part of the conversation because they were close.
My plan worked, but even before we tore the wall down my plan was always to put up sliding doors so that we could close off the kitchen if we wanted to.
I knew I wanted sliding doors but I also knew I didn’t want the typical barn doors.
Though our home is a Craftsman Bungalow (known for their wood architectural elements), nonpocketed sliding doors would already stand out, so I wanted to find doors that would blend in, so to speak, sticking with similar styled doors.
My husband found a pair of genuine barn doors made in the late 1800’s on eBay for super cheap and I began the long and laborious task of stripping, sanding, filling, resanding and painting the doors.
I plan to put privacy glass in the upper portion in both doors with possibly some black lettering on the glass to either say ‘Kitchen’ or ‘Welcome’, one side in English and the other in Spanish.
Here are a few examples:
Our doors will be the same color as our walls with black hardware.
Because of the fact that there were no standard door sizes ‘back in the day’ our barn doors are in fact too short. So we’re going to be working some magic, i.e. adding wood to the bottom of the door, to make them long enough for our space.
Last night we got the track up, which, believe it or not, took a few hours. But hey, progress is progress, right!
The left door is patiently waiting on my dining room table for the hangers to be attached. The right door is on the back porch, not so patiently waiting to be painted. lol I need to bring her inside soon so she can acclimate to indoor temps.
I also knew I didn’t want the popular hangers that you see everywhere:
They look great, especially on the sliding doors above, but I decided to use T shape hangers because the hanger is actually attached to the top of the door instead of the front. The example below is similar to the set we purchased.
We used these same T shaped hangers on a historical home we flipped back in 2016 and they worked great.
It probably would have been a lot easier to get new doors for our dining room, but what’s the fun in that? lol
We live in a (last) turn-of-the-century home and bottom line is, I like old things. I love the history that they come with. Yes, it’s an insane amount of work that most people won’t notice, but that’s ok, I’m not doing it for them. :-)
My goal for April is to get these doors completed, outfitted with new glass and hardware, and hung in my dining room.
Wish me luck! And tell me what project (big or small) you will be working on in your home for April!
Blessings,
Catrina
