Building and Hanging some Old-Fashioned Barn Doors

My son and I put the doors on the shed this weekend. This shed is a 12 by 16 foot pole building that we built this summer. We just built it, no plans. It changed and grew as we worked on it. It is made of rough-cut pine from a Mennonite sawmill down the road, so to speak.

We debated about what kind of doors to put on it. We initially were going to put a sliding/track door on it, but the side we wanted the door on wasn't big enough for the track, and we didn't want it to stick out from the building to make it work. We put the door on the 12 foot side of the shed.

We eventually decided to build two swinging barn doors. We built them a while back, but let them sit inside the shed for about a month for them to dry out a bit and lose some weight. They were really heavy because the wood was a bit green.

We got the largest hinges they sell at Tractor Supply, our cordless drill, a ratchet and some bolts and hung them. We also had to do a bit of site work, digging out a place for them to swing out. 

They were a bit tricky to hang, and the fact that we just built the shed eyeballing it, not worrying about it being too square, and figuring we could make it look square enough with our finishing touches, made it a bit trickier, but they turned out pretty good.

 We wanted it to look like an old-time farm outbuilding, and it does. The opening was 7 foot wide and about 6 and 1/2 feet high, so I could walk through without ducking. The doors were pretty big and heavy, considering we built them with rough-cut, real-sized, one by eights, We braced them up in the back with a Z pattern backing, and we put a one by eight cross beam to put our lock onto the front, an old fashioned board holder. You just pull the two by four out when you want in, and the door is nice and snug.

We still need to put the battens on the shed before the snow starts flying, and we plan to put a loft in on the high side, where it is about 10 feet high.