So, I have a confession to make. When I put the barn doors up in one of the alcoves in the front room, I was in a hurry for a weekend away in the mountains. As soon as I got them up, I noticed several problems but I didn't have time to deal with them.
Since the doors are so large, I needed to be careful about how much they weigh. I used very light pieces to put them together. Most of each door is just paneling. The rest is MDF trim. This made the doors a lot less sturdy than they need to be. Also, I had some thinking to do to be able to install floor tracks. The last thing we noticed is that we couldn't access the very skinny middle shelf behind the doors because they need to overlap in order to open both ways and the top track wasn't long enough to pull them completely out of the way.
It was finally time to make some changes and fixes so we can access these shelves easier. I started by taking the doors down. Now you can see the skinny, middle shelf that we weren't able to get to.
Next, I took the header and track down since we realized the only way to be able to access the middle shelf was to make the track 9' instead of 8' long. I grabbed a new 10' header and put it in place to make sure it wasn't too big. There's a sconce light to the left and the second alcove to the right. Once I saw that it fit just fine, I took it down and painted it.
Next, I needed to work on the doors. That reminds me. There were two things I messed up when making the doors the first time around. They're not sturdy enough because they're too skinny which is also a problem for how they hang on the hanging bars. It's not easy to explain and I don't have a good picture of the problem it was causing so you'll just have to take my word for it. I decided to fix both issues by adding a 1x6 to the back of each side on both doors.
Tada!
Another thing I didn't get pictures of is the extender I bought for the end of the top track. When you buy barn door hardware, you get the hangers and other items with it and the price reflects that. All I needed was a longer track but I just couldn't find anything I could use. Amazingly, there's a product you can use to just extend the track you already have!
Once the paint dried on the header, I put it up and then got the track and extender into place. Then the doors went up. We can finally get to the middle shelf!
The last thing I needed to fix was the bottom track pieces. I found another nice product that made it so that I didn't need to attach anything to the tile floor. These cool things attached to the walls of the shelving very easily and I was able to move the wheels and pegs around until I got it right.
I need to add trim to the sides of the doors! That's another job for another time. Now, where's my level?
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