DIY Bypass Barn Doors |Part 2 (Vintage Revivals)

Hello and Happy Wednesday to you! Yesterday I shared part 1 of the sliding bypass barn door tutorial, and today we are chatting about the string art portion.

The inspiration for this project came to me in the 3rd grade. Apparently inspiration doesn’t have an expiration date. If you were lucky enough to make one of these string art projects back in the day you are already a professional on these closet doors. Congratulations!

If you’ve never ventured into this geometric string art world, let me be your tour guide.

Basically for a project like this you are using straight lines at lots of different angles to create a rounded shape. (we’ll get into this deeper in a second)

There is one rule for creating art like this. You need to have the same number of holes on your horizontal and vertical axis. That is it.

Because my vertical pieces were roughly twice as long as the horizontal ones, the spacing between holes had to be different but each piece had 44 holes in it. I settled on 44 because that is what I could evenly divide the length of the horizontal board into. And once I had the number the holes on the vertical board were spaced accordingly.

Notice in the picture above that the marks aren’t centered on the board. I compensated the measurement for the boards that fit on the inside of the frame once it’s built (and I wanted to make sure that the string art was far enough away from the back.)

Because we were making 2 doors, we needed holes on 2 vertical and 2 horizontal boards for our frame. Instead of marking all 4 boards, I marked the spaces on one of each and then we stacked them and clamped the corresponding board underneath so that we could drill them 2 at a time. We put a 3rd board at the bottom so that the drill bit didn’t hit the concrete, and a piece of painters tape on the drill bit to mark how deep the bit needed to go.

Once this was done we assembled the doors (see part 1 for more info on that!)

For the actual string part of the string art I bought 3 packages of white cotton clothesline from Home Depot. I made a giant 5 gallon bucket of instant coffee and let the rope sit in it for 12 hours. After 12 hours I took it out and let it air dry completely over night. Then I put it in the bathtub and rinsed it with cold water until the water ran clear.

Then I made a HUGE mistake. I put it in the dryer.

Do you know what 300 feet of rope looks like when it comes out of a dryer?

It looks like a knot the size of a 6 year old.

…we had it separated and ready to go.

Start by numbering your holes (mentally) as follows:

To make things easier I added a piece of painters tape to the end of the rope so that it could fit in the holes, and so that it didn’t fray more.

On the other end I tied a simple knot (always start on the bottom, that way you can hide the knot!)

So if you start (like I did) on the far hole on the horizontal piece, you will take your rope and thread it through the bottom hole on the vertical piece. 1 to 1.