I Love Lamp: How To Hang A Barn Door

Hire Steven that's how. This ENTIRE thing was his brainchild. Basically, our kitchen used to be the restaurant for the Schwarzenegger Sunshine Valley House, which in some ways is super cool (giant industrial stove, lots and lots of space, crazy big shop sink) and in other ways is super sucky (giant industrial stove that doesn't work very well, lots and lots of space that's uninsulated, crazy big shop sink with pipes that freeze). But we're working on it! And working on it includes getting a door that is more than a piece of fabric for its entrance.

Working on it has also included a shit ton of painting on my behalf, but I'll save those photos etc for next week.

The barn door was, well, in our barn. (Imagine that!) It divided the work space from the goat pens.

Removing it was relatively simple-- Steven unscrewed the rail with our power drill and some hand tools. The rail was going to be a bit too long to fit in our kitchen, so we snapped it off, which is actually not so hard to do when it's been well below freezing for a long time and the rail has become brittle.

Getting it to the house was a bit trickier. As incredibly strong as I am (!) we decided we should probably enlist the help of some more muscle. Our contractor, perhaps fearful for our safety once getting wind of our intentions, was kind of enough to take a moment from the motel and help us get the door out of the barn, onto our car, then into our living room.

Through the snow, of course. BECAUSE IT NEVER STOPS SNOWING HERE.

Anyway.

Unsurprisingly, the barn door smelled a bit like BARN. Having recently purchased some Nature's Miracle just in case Waldo decided to make himself feel very at home, we decided to give it a go.

And it worked! The next steps are not documented because I was manically painting the whole time, but essentially, Steven made our wall more secure with a combination of more barn wood, lots of drilling, and some 2 x 4s. Because otherwise we were gonna have to hang the door on some loosely stapled, ancient laminate which even we know is a TERRIBLE idea.

The two of us muscling it up onto the drilled in rails is not documented either, though I've got to say a video would have been quite amusing in retrospect. Lots of contorting and grunting and finally.... VOILA!

Since salvaging is the name of the game up here (or as we've been saying, "Rustic is our bitch"), we also made our bar shelves from barn wood and L's found in the old laundry room.

Yes, it's a rather odd collection of booze at the moment, but you're supposed to be looking at the fine craftsmanship of the shelves not wondering if we really drink Jager!

Here's the door from the other side which shows you a) our view from the living room b) a sneak peek of the rest of the kitchen and c) that empty saddle which we have yet to address.

Always something to be done out here...!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)