Closets With Sliding Barn-style Doors

We had a huge room, taking up the whole second story, with no closets. It was time to build his and her closets so we could put some actual use to the spare bedroom downstairs.

In our case the 2 corners were the best place to put the closets. At first we were going to put them in the 2 corners on each side of the window in hopes to create a bench area between the closets and under the window. Be sure to identify all outlets and light switches before building, in order to avoid relocating light switches we had to abort the window plan. no complaints here... 

Build the frames for your closets. I always like to take a picture of just the frame so I have an idea where the studs are. It also helps to mark some of the studs on the floor or existing walls because once you put up the drywall it all becomes a mystery.

In this case "hers" is well more organized then "his." We took a trip to IKEA to buy some organizers and had to rig up some modifications to make everything fit in what's obviously a non-IKEA closet. Go all out with this and plan for everything you have.

Measure the width of your door way divide by 2 for each door. Measure the height of your doorway. I should of added that when building your frames make sure that the wall to the left and right of the doorway are wide enough that the doors won't overhang the wall when open. So in my case, the wall doorway is 30" wide and the wall next to the doorway is 16" wide. I built the doors using 1"x4" boards, mending plates and 2"x4"s. I cut all the 1"x4" boards to the height of my doorway plus 4". I then used bar clamps and mending plates to place the boards together. Do your best at keeping them straight. After that I then cut 2"x4" boards and placed them on the top and bottom of the door, on the back side. I made the mistake of not measuring how far from the edge I placed the 2"x4" boards so they were inconsistent on all the doors. Keeping this consistent would of helped A LOT when inserting the screw eye hooks and wheels. You want the height of the whole door (from bottom of wheels to top of eye hook screws) to be equal so the bar will slide through evenly. The reason for the wheels was because I couldn't find studs in the existing walls and even though I used drywall plugs I didn't want to have all the weight of the doors (~50lbs) hanging from the bars.  

Buy all of your hardware. I used 1.5"x8' galvanized pipe. Working with the corner was the hardest. I wanted to place the pipe 2" on center from the closet. Trying to keep that 2" after the corner bed was difficult and resulted  in a few trips to the store to find the hardware that would fit. I then cut the pipe to the length I needed and then had the hardware store bend the pipe at a 90* angle. As I said previously I used dry wall plugs on all screws that I put into the wall for extra support. I had to string the pipe between the eye hook screws before screwing the pipe into the wall (I think that means they are permanently up there). I wanted the overhang after the corner bend because  I thought it was be cool to be able to hang clothes on there while she picks out her outfits. The "T" component used after the corner bend was actually all 3/4" fittings. It had to be this way because after cutting the pipe there wasn't any threads on that end so I had to be able to slide the pipe through these fittings. I considered drilling a screw through the top of this hardware piece to stabilize the pipe some more but after all was said it done it worked out to be a snug fit.

And here your have barn-style doors for your closets. I still plan to stain these doors a dark brown but I was so excited to post on instructables that I couldn't wait. I've had no issues with these once getting everything lined up. They roll smoothly and you can't even see the wheels which is cool.