We Finally Added a Sliding Door in Our 1990s Home

The new sliding barn door gives us the option to separate our two living spaces when we need to.

Our home was built in the late 1990s, and if you’ve ever spent time in a house built during that era, you probably know the typical floor plan. Four bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, a formal living room at the front of the house, a family room at the back, and the dining room and kitchen somewhere in between.

Except we don’t really do “formal living room.” We use both of our living spaces. There’s a television, music and video games in both rooms, and depending on what everyone is doing, there can be quite a bit happening on opposite sides of the house at the same time.

For years, I’ve wanted some way to close off the opening between our dining room and the back of the house. Not because I wanted to permanently separate the rooms, but because sometimes we want to watch television in one room without hearing what someone else is doing in the other.

The problem was figuring out what kind of door would actually work there.

Why We Chose a Sliding Door

I considered several different options over the years but because of the existing doorway and the way the rooms are laid out, a traditional swinging door really didn’t make sense. A pocket door was a no-go because we have an oven on the other side of that wall. And I felt like an accordion door would not only look out of place, but probably wouldn’t do much to block the noise either.

Eventually I kept coming back to the same solution: a sliding door. Or, I guess technically, a barn door. And that gave me pause.

Our house isn’t farmhouse style and I really didn’t want to add something that screamed farmhouse just because barn doors happen to be a practical solution. I wanted it to look like it belonged in our house, not like we were trying to turn a late-90s traditional home into something it isn’t.

I found The Barn Door Hardware Store online and liked that they specialize in quality hardware but also offer complete door kits with the wood already cut and ready to assemble. That sounded right up our alley!

Choosing a Style That Worked With Our Home

I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible. We chose a plain single-door design in Early American brown stain with understated straight strap hardware. No X design, no overly rustic details, nothing that made it feel overly farmhouse.

The warm wood and simple black hardware work beautifully with the more traditional elements already in our dining room. And unexpectedly, the wood brought something to the room that I didn’t realize it was missing — warmth.

We have a lot of white trim and molding in this space, neutral walls and carpet, so the natural wood breaks all of that up and adds some texture and character without changing the style of the room.

What the Installation Was Like

The pre-stained wood for the door arrived separately from the hardware kit, and my husband assembled the door himself. Everything was already cut, which made the process much easier than starting with raw lumber and building a door from scratch.

We did have one little quirk specific to our house. Our dining room has a chair rail and substantial molding, so the hardware couldn’t simply be mounted directly above the doorway. We needed a header board that would give the door enough clearance to slide past the existing trim.

We measured the length needed based on the hardware and determined the thickness necessary to accommodate the chair rail. Home Depot cut the board to size for us, and my husband painted it the same color as the wall.

Once the header was installed, he followed the instructions provided by The Barn Door Hardware Store and had the door up surprisingly quickly. It was a much more manageable project than I’d imagined.

The Part I Was Most Worried About

I didn’t want a cheap, lightweight door rattling back and forth on the wall. That was probably my biggest hesitation about doing this project in the first place.

I wanted the finished door to feel like an intentional part of our home, not an accessory we had tacked onto it later. And that has probably been the biggest surprise.

The door and hardware kit are substantial. When you slide it, it doesn’t wobble or feel clunky or noisy. It glides closed softly, almost like the drawer on a really nicely made piece of furniture. That’s exactly what I wanted.

The door itself is thick enough that closing it makes a noticeable difference in the sound traveling between the two sides of our house, which was the entire reason we started this project. But aesthetically? I think I like it even more than I expected to. I love when that happens.

Would I Do It Again?

Without hesitation. We’ve lived in this house for nearly nine years and this project honestly has me wondering why we waited so long. Everything was seamless, from start to finish.

It solved a very practical problem but it also added warmth, texture and architectural interest to a room that needed a little something. And despite my initial concern, it doesn’t make our home feel farmhouse style at all. It just looks like it belongs here. If you’re considering adding a sliding door but don’t necessarily have a farmhouse-style home, I wouldn’t let the words barn door scare you away. The style of the door, stain and hardware make an enormous difference. Keep those elements simple and classic and a sliding door can work beautifully in any style home.

We used The Barn Door Hardware Store for ours and I would absolutely recommend them. They specialize in barn door hardware, but you can also purchase the door directly from them as we did, or source your own lumber locally and just purchase their hardware. For us, ordering the pre-cut door kit was worth it. We got the custom-looking result I wanted without turning it into a much bigger DIY project than it needed to be.

And now we can finally close the door when somebody on the other side of the house has the TV too loud. Which, really, may be my favorite home improvement of all!

Worth the Wait

After years of wanting a way to separate these two spaces, this simple change has made such a difference in how our home works for us.