I am obsessed with barns and have always wanted to live in a converted barn with a farm and farm animals. Sadly, the ones that were for sale here in wine country cost over $4 million! 🙁 So I decided to bring those barn elements into our new house… and voila, here are our barn door shutters!
As our house was being built, I knew I wanted a “statement piece” in the living room and the dining room. Since there are so many windows on the ground floor, I asked myself: “What is something unique that I can do with the window coverings besides drapery or blinds? And how do I incorporate the barn elements into these spaces?” Then I thought – how about using barn doors as window shutters?
The only issue we had with the layout of the house is that we didn’t have enough wall space on each side of the windows to open the traditional barn doors off to either side of the opening. After doing some research, I found out that the bypass barn doors would be the only option.
I stalked Instagram every day and came across Julian Degracia of Degracia Built who builds custom furniture and home decor in the Bay Area. After chatting with him about my “crazy” idea of these barn doors and doing all the measurements of the windows and wall spaces, we went ahead and started the project.
It took Julian a week just to build and paint these barn doors, and another 15 hours (5 hours each day over a span of 3 days) for him to install them. The end result – beautiful barn doors over our windows. We plan to add roller shades behind these shutters so that we could have a little more privacy yet allowing light to come through the windows!
Here is what the living room shutters look like when they are closed…
And when they are open…
Here is the other side of the living room when the shutters are closed…
And when they are open…
Loving my farmhouse pillows (from left to right) – gray faux fur from Costco, “farmhouse” linen from Etsy seller “With Lavender & Grace,” and blush pink linen from Etsy seller “Olivia’s Smile Decor.”
Our youngest cat, Sidney, loves to look out the windows!
I think he spotted a bird outside in the backyard!
I was checking out the shutters hardware and Sidney was supervising! 🙂
The dining room barn door shutters when closed. They look so perfect with our orb chandelier!
The shutters were halfway open to show the bypass system…
And when they are all open…
What do you think of these barn door shutters? Do you like them?