Sliding barn style door with glass insert

We started our kitchen remodel project a couple of years ago and after the kitchen was functional, progress slowed down. We also had a baby in the meantime so progress really, really slowed down. Now the baby is 6 months old and we have a bit more freedom so our latest "finishing touch" was to complete the door between the kitchen and the laundry room. The original door was a regular door that swung into the kitchen and took up too much space. It was trashed during our remodel. What we wanted was a sliding door to use the space more effectively. We like the barn door look but we couldn't buy anything standard and needed to customize to fit our space. We fished a lot of ideas from DIY sliding doors on the internet and came up with our own. This is the door in its almost final state. Our refrigerator needs to be put back in place on the left with the door sliding behind it.

Ingredients

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Lumber:

• 3 - 1x8x8
• 1 - 1x10x6
• 1 - 1x8x6
• 1 - 1x46x
• 1 - 1x6x6
• 1 - 2x3x8 (to attach the rail)

Screws:

• EZ Twist and lock (Here)
• Wood Screw #8x3” (Here)
• 1.5 inch wood screws

Other:

• 1 - piece of glass
• clear caulk
• paintable wood filler
• Felt 1-1/4 Nail on (Here)
• Paint
• Rail (Pocket Door Hardware) (Here)

Directions

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We did a lot of sketching out on paper to get an idea of what we wanted. P has gotten really good at using Google Sketch Up since we have been doing a lot of home projects so he put together this sketch to help us get the full idea. M wanted to have glass on the top half of the door so she could see into the laundry room and into the backyard. We also needed to minimize the thickness of the door so that it would fit the space behind the fridge. We decided to create a sandwich with the wood and hold the glass insert in between the two layers.

Assemble door frames (layers)

We measured our door to fit the space based on where we would attach the rail to the wall for the height and from our side to side measurements on the door opening. One issue we had is that we needed our door to cover the door opening but it couldn't extend much beyond that because when open, it would hit the upright pantry we have installed next to the fridge. We started by cutting the lumber to create the two frames (layers) that would create the sandwich door.

We did not use any fancy cuts to put the pieces together, we used pocket holes done with Kreg Jig. These holes were on the inside of the sandwich so we didn't do anything special to cover them since there would be wood attached to this side that would hide the holes. We also chose to paint our doors first for a cleaner painted finish. It was also easier to paint individual pieces of wood rather than the heavy door once it was finished.

Route glass insert

For the glass to sit flat with one of the door layers we routed the wood to sit the glass inside it. We do not have a router at home so we decided to use a Forstner Bit instead (similar to this one) to make a series of round cuts in a straight line. P marked the drill bit with a strip of painters tape to mark the depth he needed. This was the depth of our glass plus a little extra for the caulk that would also be there. It is really tedious work but it was cheaper than buying a new tool at the moment. It took a bit of time, some light chiseling and some sanding but the glass fit perfectly. To keep the glass in place, we put a bead of clear caulk on each side of the glass along the edge.

Next we screwed the top layer trapping the glass in between. The pressure of the glass and of the second layer of wood when we added it flattened out the bead of caulk and sort of sealed the edges. We didn't add a lot so we didn't have any clean up on the visible part of the glass. If you did add too much caulk, you could just clean it off the glass after the wood frame was screwed together, while the caulk is still wet.

Rail

To attach the door to the wall, we used a pocket door rail from a home improvement store. We wanted the barn door hardware that we saw in several places but it was all too expensive. We may replace this rail at some point in the future with something a bit more stylish but it does the job. We attached the rail to a 2x3x8 then attached the 2x3x8 to the wall using the dry wall anchors EZ Twist and lock. Our wall has 1/2" dry wall which is attached to thin furring strips and concrete cinder block behind. We tried Tapcon concrete anchors but they did not work for us, so we decided to go with the dry wall anchors. The drywall anchors (we used 5) worked really well. Each anchor is rated to hold between 50 and 70 lbs. depending on whether something is mounted to a ceiling or wall. With 5 of them, we figured that would be enough to support our door which was between 50 and 70 lbs.

Pet door

We made one of our boards shorter to create an opening for a cat door so our two cats can come in and out of the laundry room. We are still in the process of adding the flap to it.

Final Touches

We deviated from our original plan a bit and didn't add the side boards on the bottom half of the door because we liked being able to see the boards underneath. To add a bit more stability, we decided to add the crosspiece on the diagonal. We used a 1x6 instead of 1x8 so we could see more of the boards. We also had to notch the piece so match the cat door opening. We then covered all the screw holes with a bit of wood filler and painted. Finally, we stapled a strip of felt to the bottom of the door so it doesn't scratch the floor. 

This is a pretty rough outline of what we did to create our door but we hope this project can help you get some ideas.