Sliding door hardware question....

John Pollman

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1,332
Location
Rochester Hills, MI
Howdy all!

I've got a pretty simple little project that I need to do and just thought I'd ask a quick question here to see if there might be a better way to do it than what I have planned. Here goes.

I have some friends that are getting ready to sell their house and I'm doing a lot of odds and ends type repair work to get it ready. It's a nice bungalow that was built in probably the late forties or early fifties. Their main bedroom is upstairs. They have some nice built in book shelves that are on one side of the knee wall that separates the room from the stair well. She would like to put some sliding doors on the front to close them off and make it look neat and clean. The shelves are basically six feet wide and three feet high. What I figured I could do is just make a frame to fit directly in front of the shelves. It would only be maybe 2" thick. I figured that I could just cut two slots in the top and bottom rail of the frame and then just use a couple of pieces of paneling to make the doors. I'm thinking that if I just made the doors slightly taller than the clear space that I could just slide the top of the door into the top slot and then drop it down into the corresponding bottom slot. That would keep it in place and allow it to slide easily. But I was just wondering if I'd be better off trying to find some premade sliding door track or something like that. Once I get it assembled, I can just set it in place in front of the shelves and put a couple screws into the floor and just a couple of brackets on the upper edge inside and attach the top to the under side of the top shelf. That wold securely hold the unit in place and if whoever buys the house decides that they want the shelves open, it would be quick and simple to remove without any damage to the existing built in shelves.

Does the "home made" track sound like a good plan or should I try to buy some metal or plastic track?

Thanks for any input!

John
 
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