Can’t you just fix my existing barn door that someone else made/installed?

There are some situations where we are asked to swap out a barn door that someone else made and installed with something we can customize for your space.

In some cases, we can do this by modifying the door you have, but this likely requires us to have the door in the workshop and either we are coming to get it, or the customer brings it to us. If it has wheel assemblies sticking up from the top, it is best that these are left in place so we can see how they were mounted and what kind of space exists between the door top and the wheel groove we calculate things from.

In some cases, the rail the customer has already installed up on their wall may be fine, but we still need to check it for level and other things… length of rail may matter if the new door we are making becomes wider even by a couple of inches. And, in many cases, the issue had been that a customer’s existing door was made not wide enough. We have seen this many times. Some rails may not be fully secure, or they are not level. Some are made in sections that cause a bump sound when the door rolls across the metal. And rails may have stoppers on the ends, but our new door may require that those parts get moved or replaced. This is often a bit more involved than it looks because of the way some of these pre-fab kits are made and installed. It may look easy, but there are some tinkerings and changes that usually require changes and fixes. The main fix many fail to consider is the guide needed at the base of all doors. We can explain this further, but all doors need them and we have several methods for this, and one needs to be implemented when installing on-site. Any existing guide may not necessarily work for our newly made door.

If we can use your rail as is, that is a good thing, but we still need to modify some other features. Kit rails (and barn door parts, brackets, spacers, and rails from nearly every type we have seen) are typically mounted a lot closer to the wall than we would prefer. We need to either modify the spacers or brackets that have been used to mount it by bringing them out further using some of our retrofitting/fixing. Adding spacers, etc., or we need to modify our wheel assemblies that we use when we install in order to make the door work properly on your rail. We have a few methods for this but it comes down to the thickness of the barn door and how far it lives out from the wall.

We know your door needs to close the space and “hug” the wall as well as possible, but we have our methods for making this happen and so we need to do a lot more than just take down one door build and put up another. It is more involved. Our artisan craft and understanding of these systems is what makes the end results be that easy, smooth, perfect barn door experience that you seek.

When it comes to cost, there are some (but not all) cases where we can discount your project if we take some of your parts and old doors/wood. It depends on whether or not we can use these elements later in other projects. In some cases, we cannot and so we dispose of things, and that too has a cost.

There are some prefabbed barn door kits, installers, online sellers of barn door systems, and methods that are perfectly fine, and many that had been installed nicely with care and details in mind. But we started this business because we found that in most cases, either a DYIer or a builder tried to put them up and did not really finish it fully. People often tell me that whomever put the door up was frustrated and stumped by things that appeared to be easier than they actually were. I often joke that even the most experienced builder would rather spend the hours and mind-bending tinkering it takes to put these up properly on reframing a whole kitchen than doing a barn door again. And I can tell you based on our eight years of experience doing this, that if it took anyone less than 4 continuous hours to fully install everything from the time the first tools were brought into the work space to the time the last tools were brought away and the space was cleaned up, either something was left out or something went horribly wrong, or the person is not telling the whole story.

We also add features many do not even consider. The way our base guides are adjusted and set in place at the bottoms of doors, the SIDE BOARD features we fashion and install on-site to “bring the door back in close” as it passes over wall features, and the fact our wheel assemblies and other elements are adjustable and made to handle these constantly used large moving rectangles than are centerpieces of functional art along your home or business walls.

Each case is custom. Not all cases are able to be swapped out without a complete redo/reinstall of our own doors and hardware systems. We do not do high-gloss/cabinet-grade doors unless the framing/outside edges of the doors are done with our rustic or semi-rustic wood and methods. If your door has glass or mirror, or some metal elements, we likely need to replace those with our supplied similar material. We cannot risk trying to work on your door with your glass inset as it may break and many of the kit doors from online or box center sources are made with what we consider to be sub-par materials.