As I complete more and more projects around my new home, my favorite features about the house changes. At first, it was the beautiful fireplace in the living room, then it was my faux grass wall in the kitchen and now? It’s my amazing chalkboard barn door.

Originally I had the traditional, white bi-fold doors for my pantry and I was going to jazz it up by painting the adjacent wall with chalkboard paint. I always liked the chalkboard walls! However, I didn’t feel like it went with the aestetic of the rest of the kitchen. Then I was like hmm, what about a barn door? Perfect! So I started looking at barn doors on Pinterest and one came up that had the frame of a barn door but the entire center was a chalkboard. That’s when I thought, what about half and half? Boom, let’s do it.

I googled chalkboard barn door and after searching through pages and pages, I finally saw one that shared my vision. However, it was from a company in Tampa that charged an arm and a leg for shipping, plus who was going to install this thing? I had to find someone local and more than likely something that was custom made. As much as I would love to say that I made this door to sound like a complete badass, I didn’t. I searched ‘barn doors’ on Facebook Marketplace and sent a few contractors, or whatever these folks are called, the dimensions of my door frame and a screenshot of the one I found in Tampa. Only two out of six responded, but only one offered to install it WITH the hardware for an additional fee.

Once I paid the deposit, I got a message about 3 weeks later that the door was ready. I was skeptical about sending the deposit to an unknown party but he had a professional invoice and plenty of pics of his work on his profile.

When the door arrived, it was massive! This door is 4 ft. x 7 ft. and this thing is HEAVY! So heavy that my dad, who just happened to be at my house, had to assist with getting it out of the truck. Once it was installed, I noticed that there wasn’t a handle and it swinging which seemed unsafe and unstable like the barn door I already had in my bedroom. BUT, his pricing was more than fair so I didn’t complain.

I ordered the barn door handle on Amazon, click here for the link, and some floor guides that you can order here.

Turns out, the handle and guides weren’t the biggest problems…the door wouldn’t close due to the frame around the door. It protruded so far out that the whole thing needed to come off. So even though, I didn’t build the door, I did have to do quite about to ensure it was installed properly.

My dad crowbarred the frame off and made a sad attempt at filling in the holes in the wall. I had to then get my sander out, re-putty the holes and then paint it, three times. Then I got this wise idea to put wallpaper on the inside of the pantry but I thought a solid color would look nicer, so I painted the pantry, including the shelves. Did I mention that I went out and bought a paint sprayer gun for this? Home Depot and Lowes are literally my second and third homes at this point.

After painting the pantry, I definitely needed to step my organization game up with some really nice containers. See how this stuff dominoes into more and more projects, a.k.a money? This was the part that people warned me about lol

After everything was all over, I gotta say…this is now my favorite feature of the house!