DIY Modern Barn Door Handle in One Hour: Easy Tutorial
This DIY modern barn door handle fits under the category of high-end look with a TJ Maxx budget. It took seriously under an hour to do, including spraypainting and staining the wood, and it only cost about $5!
We built our barn door to go between the master bedroom and the bathroom about six months ago and at the time just bought a standard door handle for about $7 from the hardware store. It’s fine, it works, and was one of those things we didn’t really need to fix, but I went full Veruca Salt and was like BUT I WANT IT.
I figured I’d give it a try with the leftover dowel I had from our nursery closet makeover. It turned out so good and even though Alex said verbatim “hmmm, I’m not sold, it’s kind of like cleaning the attic walls when friends come over” in the end he said it looked like such a big upgrade. Here’s how to make a one-hour modern barn door handle.
Tools & Materials
- 1” dowel rod
- 2 bell clamps (found in the plumbing section of hardware stores for a couple of dollars each)
- Wood stain – We used Early American to match the other wood tones in our master bedroom
- Black spray paint – here’s our favorite
How we did it
Start by cutting the dowel rod down to size. This is kind of an eyeball measurement based on how long we wanted the handle, but ours was 26.5 inches.
We stained the wood and spraypainted the two bell clamps black then waited for them to dry outside. You could leave your clamps the copper color they come with or paint them whatever color you’d like, but black accents matched the rest of our color scheme and we already had the paint on hand!
While they’re drying, measure where you want the screws for your clamps to go. We measured so the clamps would sit two inches in from each end of the wood dowel, so about 22.5 inches apart vertically.
The clamps come with the screw already in the middle part of the bell section, so that’s a win. Just drill your hole where you’d previously marked, then use a screwdriver to secure that screw into your door, making sure when you do that the arm parts of the clamp are horizontal.
Do the same for the second clamp and make sure the arm of the clamp is swung open. If it isn’t, look closely at the two little screws on the sides of the clamp that hold the front arm down and you’ll see one has a little ‘C’ shaped curve. Unscrew that one just a bit so you’re able to pull the arm up and open up the clamp.
With your dowel in place, pull the arm back over and snap the little ‘C’ shaped curve back over the small screw and tighten it in place, which will hold your dowel in place.
If you spray painted your clamps a different color like us, using the screwdriver has probably stripped away a bit of the paint.
You can touch it up with a tiny brush (I have these on hand from when I needed to touch up the tiny cracks in our plank accent wall) and a little bit of paint you’ve sprayed into a plastic cup or the lid of your spraypaint. Just make sure you spray that outside or you’re going to get paint all over your work area.
Now you’re done and have a very fancy-looking door handle for a very not fancy budget.
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