New Bedroom Closet Doors
The bedroom closet doors that came with the house were the sliding bypass doors. While they were functional and nothing was wrong with them, we really did not like that only 40% of the closet was accessible at any given time. We decided to replace the doors with folding bi-fold doors. This was a great option because we could open up our closet entirely, giving us access to everything at once.
We also had no closet system, just the standard wire rack shelf and closet rod. I installed a closet system while replacing the doors. In this post, I’ll go over the steps I took to transform our closet.
Choosing the Materials:
Finding the right doors were really important. Keep in mind that not all closets are created equal. Our closet was framed out for bypass doors which meant the doors slightly overlapped even when fully closed. This means that the opening is narrower to account for the door overlap. We chose wood bi-fold doors because I would be able to shave off a maximum of 1/4” from each side of the doors to account for our narrower opening. Generally, this is not recommended because doors aren’t made to trim off sides, only the bottom to fit the opening.
For our closet system, there are a number of great prepackaged systems you can purchase from the local home store or online. To save some money, I decided to reuse a bookshelf that was used for a built-in in our living room that we removed. All I had to do was purchase some shelf brackets, closet rods and drawer slides.
The Build:
I started by removing the closet doors and the track they rode against at the top. Once removed, I had a big opening to work with.
I took the measurement of the opening width and height. Next, I measured the width of all 4 doors side by side (these were bifold doors, so we had 4 mini doors). I divided the difference in widths and then divided that by 8, two sides per door. That gave me the amount I needed to shave off each side of the door to make it fit into our opening.
Tip: Closet doors are made so that you can trim the bottom to fit the opening height, but not the width. If you’re in a similar situation, I would not recommend shaving off more than 1/8” from the sides. If you’re looking to replace doors into the same style, you won’t have to mess with trimming down widths.
I needed to shave off 1/8” from each side of the doors so the final product would fit our opening.
This next step is considerably easier with a table saw but can be achieved with a circular saw and guide or a track saw. I trimmed the doors using my table saw and used a palm router with a 1/8” roundover bit to ease the edges and match the design of the doors.
I dry fit the doors and they fit perfectly. While doing this, I measured out for the tracks and cut them to width.
Tip: Tracks are generally made with aluminum. Aluminum is soft enough and can be cut with normal power saw blades. Jsut remember to go slow and it’ll be fine.
I installed the tracks and bottom bracket to hang the doors. Everything worked and fit properly!
I stained the doors using a gel stain in a rich dark tone.
Next, I took out the closet racks and rods. There was some drywall tear-out when removing so I patched the holes with some drywall compound. I slid our old bookshelf into the closet and it fit perfectly. I centered the bookshelf and attached it to the closet wall. I was lucky that at least 1 stud was positioned where I needed it.
Tip: You need to find a way to hit a stud when doing this because there might be some weight on the unit and you don’t want it tipped over. You can utilize brackets or add a plywood backer to the whole unit to get some meat to hit while screwing into a stud.
I used brackets and fastened one side to the shelf and the other to the stud. I measured the right side of the shelf and marked out 40” and 80”. The right side of the closet would have double rods and the left side a single rod for longer clothing items like dresses.
Tip: Double rods generally have heights of 38-40” above the floor for the lower rod and 76-80” for the upper rod. Of course, if you’re taller or shorter, you have wiggle room. Single rods are generally placed 60-65” high.
I installed the rod supports, using a level to mark the wall so the rod was installed level. I had purchased adjustable rods so width was not an issue as long as the width wasn’t longer than the max width of the rods. I repeated the process on the left side with the single rod 60” high.
I had some leftover panels from a second bookshelf from the living room built-in. I disassembled the bookshelf and cut the long side panels to width to act as shelves over the top closet rods. I fasted the shelves using shelf brackets.
The last part was to make drawers for the bottom half of the shelf unit. I made simple 1/2” plywood boxes an inch narrower than the internal shelf opening.
Tip: Each drawer slide is 1/2” wide so be sure to subtract an inch from widths when making drawer boxes.
I used the leftover shelves as drawer fronts. I cut them to the right size and used iron on melamine edge banding to cover the exposed particle board.
I added drawer pulls and drawer slides to finish off the project!
Check out the gallery below!
