DIY Wood Beam Doorway

Today I want to share the process of how we created a wood beam doorway using readily available rustic boards. We opened up the wall between our kitchen and what used to be the small back entry on our original farmhouse. In case you are new here, we added an addition onto our home, and have been working on all of the finishing. This doorway is really the transition space between the old and new part of the house.

You can follow this whole entryway/mudroom project from start to finish here. It is still a work in progress, but has come so far!

To get started, these are the supplies and tools that we used:

Tools

• Air Nail Gun
• Heavy Duty Nails
• Chop Saw
• Table Saw
• Measuring Tape
• Level
• Optional: Drill
• Hammer

Supplies

• Wood Glue
• 9- 8ft 1″x8″ Rustic Style “Barn Wood” Boards from Home Depot
• Heavy Duty Flathead Nails
• Finishin Nails
• Optional: Screws

To get started we measured our opening, and settled on the design for the opening. The first step is to measure and cut the header beam, and to add any needed bracing. Essentially you need to be sure you have something to mount to. You can either ” stick build” the beam piece by piece, or pre-assemble it.

Because we are working with a very old, unlevel house, we opted to stick frame our header beam, starting with the top outside piece, then the middle, and finally the third outside piece. Check for level and tack the first piece in place. 

We used full pieces for the outside, and ripped down the centre pieces. You are essentially going to create a U shape with your pieces. If you need to rip any boards down, make sure you leave the finished edge exposed, so that you don’t have a cut end on your posts.Run a bead of wood glue on all of the wood joints.Because these boards are very thick, we needed more than small nails to hold it in place. First we tacked the boards together using a nail gun, then for an authentic look, we chose 3″ flathead nails to secure everything in place.

Here is our kitchen on possession day 5 years ago. You can see the small doorway to the left of the fridge.

And here is our view from the addition, which is on the other side of the dooorway, before we fully opened up the wall:

And Now our Lovely Rustic Wood Opening:

Progress, progress! We still have a ways to go in terms of the kitchen reno, like paint, cabinets, lighting, outlets, refinishing the floors… (whew!) but the hallway is nearly complete- with it just needing some patching in the subfloor and the new hard wood installed. Once that is done we can put in the last of the baseboard.

I loved incorporating this reclaimed wood into this area of the house. Thanks so much for stopping in today!

-Miss Ash

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