I hate bifold doors. They certainly have their place and there are times when they are necessary. When they're not necessary, I'd rather not deal with the frustration of them coming off the track or just not folding properly. A friend of mine asked if I'd ever converted a set to French doors. My answer was no but I've thought about doing so. I'm so glad she asked! I had just the place to try it out.
My kids like to rearrange furniture and play musical rooms, just like my siblings and I when we were young. Recently, my youngest decided to switch rooms and he needed a dresser in the new room...mostly because I wasn't willing to drag his dresser from the other room down two flights of stairs. There was an extra dresser on the basement level so I pulled it into his room but there was no room left for it with all of the other furniture. However, there are two closets in his "new" room so I decided it should go inside one of the closets. It was a little big.
It fit inside the closet but opening all of the drawers was not going to work with the bifold doors so I needed to make them French doors instead. I started by pulling the doors off of the track. Then I removed all of the hardware.
Once I had the doors pulled apart and the hinges removed, I used brackets to stabilize them so that they wouldn't fold anymore.
I did end up running into a problem and had to redo it after the first attempt. The problem was with the door handle. When they were bifold doors, the handle was in the middle of each door. When changing them to French doors, the handle needs to be on the edge of the door in order to be able to open it easier. Rather than pulling the handle off, filling the hole and putting a new hole in, I decided to just undo my first attempt at attaching them, swap the doors around and then reattach them.
Next up, hinges! I was worried that this would become complicated but it was quite straightforward. I just did a lot of measuring and matching up.
Attaching the doors to the frame was tricky but not too bad. I put a 3/4" board underneath it to raise it up off of the floor so that it could swing open and closed without dragging on the carpet. It worked like a charm on the door on the left side. It did not work on the door on the right side. It is not surprising to me that the closet opening is uneven. There isn't a lot of precision in this finished basement. When I put the right-side door on top of the 3/4" board, it wouldn't fit in the opening. The doors are the exact same height so that means the opening is off. Instead of the 3/4" board, I pushed some cardboard pieces under it until it matched the height of the door on the left and then attached the hinges. I was hopeful that everything would line up but that was not the case.
The door on the left is hanging beautifully. The door on the right is not level. I can only assume the vertical side of the closet opening is not plumb, which is causing the door to be askew. Also, I'm thinking the door handles aren't installed at the same height on the door. It was time for some troubleshooting and maneuvering. I have no pictures of this process because it made me angry. I would work on it for an hour, end up with a worse problem than when I started, give up and then come back later to do the same thing. Then, today, I was finally successful!
They are not perfect but at least I got them hanging evenly. Except, I was right about the handles not being installed at the same height.
Much better! The last thing that was needed was a door stopper on the inside of the closet opening. If I didn't install one, the doors would likely, repeatedly, be pushed beyond the point that they should be, causing the hinges to be overworked. Probably the most important thing I've learned in all of my DIY adventures is to fortify everything against daily abuse. Most of the time, it's necessary to go above and beyond what you'd think is adequate. This step should be done anyway.
It's just a simple magnet latch. The opening could use some TLC after removing the track but, at this point in the project, I didn't much care. I'll get to it in the new few years, haha. Magnet latches only come with one metal plate since it's usually for one door so I had to rummage through my remnants to find something for the second door. It works so well!
The kid is happy I'm done messing around in his room too.
So there's another project I wanted to try and finally got around to it. If it weren't for the uneven walls in the finished basement, it would have gone a lot smoother. I'm grateful I never gave up!
Now, where's my socket wrench?
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