11/03/2024
I’ve been wanting to build a nice set of doors for my shop, but the material costs were a bit prohibitive. I found these old barn doors that were the perfect width for what I needed and were very inexpensive (my favorite thing). However, they were about a foot too tall, so I had to shorten them, which is more of a process than you might think. I’ll give the super abridged version here. You can find an in-depth description of the process on my website at the bottom of the “Custom Woodworking” page.
The first step was to trim the doors to the height I needed.
Then, I removed the lower center portion of the door to make room for the bottom rail to slide into its new position.
Once rebuilt you can see the difference from its original height.
After shortening the other door, I sanded and painted both doors, hung them on new jambs, and installed hardware. I also replaced some missing and broken glass panes with antique 1860’s era glass salvaged from my friend Ellen’s house to match the original wavy glass these doors had.
The new doors are a great addition to the shop. We picked the color, Sherwin Williams “Kaffee” (SW6104), to complement the field stone that will eventually cover up the cinder block portion of the walls. The next step is to install siding, which I’ll hopefully get to sooner than later. The siding will, of course, be green.
