SMART DESIGN: GOOD STYLE SLIDES INTO PERFECT FUNCTION WITH INTERIOR BARN DOORS!

Photo/design courtesy of Bestor Architecture
A red interior barn door slides on black metal exposed hardware over a large doorway separating the kitchen. (above)
I had to post the picture above because I love this style door. I know most of you who are "in the design know" are going to be thinking, "Oh, I can't believe her. A story about interior sliding barn doors. That has so been done before. This Coco is not at all original or innovative." Well to you people who are "in the design know" this story may have been done before...but never by me! LOL! So, here goes! :-)

Love the idea of a sliding interior door that is hung barn door style. These sliding doors or sliding door panels provide a solution to problematic doorways or, in my case, problematic rooms. If your doorway is too big, or your room is too small, or if there is no room for a regular standard door to swing open, or if your wall won't accommodate a pocket door due to electrical wiring or a stud, these interior sliding barn doors could do the trick.

You can actually hang any style door made out of almost any material (wood, glass, metal, plexiglass, polycarbonate etc.) like this by using the right hardware. The interior barn door hardware is engineered to allow the door to slide across a track or rod that is hung above the a door jamb. Voila.

Love what Los Angeles based Bestor Architecture did with the design of this bright red door featured above - a very literal but stylishly modern approach to the barn door concept.

Below, is a door inside my house. My door was not "designed" like the one above...it was "improvised" by me, Coco. Improvised out of desperation. A few years back during a remodel, I bought a regular raised panel door that I was planning to have installed as a pocket door in my tiny "den" (a room that is only 8'x11'). I wanted to save space in this room that is literally the size of a walk-in closet...a regular door would just get in the way, but I knew I pocket door would definitely absolutely positively work. Wrong. How wrong I was!

When the trim carpenter, Alfredo, arrived at my home towards the end of my mini-renovation, he told me all of the reasons why I couldn't install a pocket door in my tiny tiny den in my tiny tiny house. "What? I can't install a pocket door? That was my plan! What? Uh...what?", I said. I could feel all of my systems shutting down. All I heard him say was, "Waaa waaa waaa electrical. Waaa waa waa supporting wall. Waa waa stud. Waaaa waaa waaaa not enough room to install the pocket door system ...waaaa waaaa." It was an audio blur at the time...I was at my ropes end with my project that had been going on for two months (I know...two months isn't that long...so much for my patience, right?). As everything around me started to spin and I as my hearing faded and as my limbs grew numb (think these could be symptoms of remodeling stress), I said calmly but frantically to the trim carpenter, Alfredo, "I don't know what to do. This is not right. This is NOT part of the plan. Well can't you do something? Anything? Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. Can't you just tear down the wall and start over (he stared at me like I was crazy at this point) or put the pocket door on the outside and then do something to cover the top?" A light bulb went off over Alfredo's head at the last suggestion. It was at that point he said he would create my cottage style barn door for my den. Phew. Total meltdown averted and now I have a door that takes up little or no space and allows me to enjoy my walk-in closet size den every day! Still works some two years later...perfect (the door is perfect...not the den...the den is still too small)!


Photo by Coco of Nbaynadamas
An interior barn door in the tiny den in my very very tiny home in the Hollywood Hills (above)
P.S. I opted not to spend a ton of money on the more expensive and more beautiful exposed barn door hardware (thousands of dollars in some cases just for the hardware). Instead I had Alfredo, the trim carpenter, build a box valance of sorts to hide the cheaper not so pretty hardware. Again, it does the trick.

P.P.S. The walls in my den are not yellow. For some reason the color in this photo is off. The walls are actually this great Ralph Lauren tan linen color (forgot what it is called). I'm sure you don't care about this post script!

Anyhoooo....I think these barn doors are very SMART DESIGN. What do you think?

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Write by: AN - Wednesday, December 2, 2009