[jfranci3]

Project background:
The previous owner of my condo had installed a cabinet/desk unit into the main closet of a loft-style condo. I needed to recover this closet space. The rest of the unit has bi-fold doors, which worked great but would be difficult to match the wood. The opening is 81" high x 96" wide.



Door selection:
Conventional hardware stores only had basic doors. Their bifold door selection consisted of louvered and oak wood styles, which wouldn't fit the style of my place. Their special order selection wasn't much better. Modifying conventional doors would have required going section sliding or special ordering 48" doors. Both options required special hardware. A search of the internet revealed expensive door options all in the $1000 - 2000 neighborhood.
A stop into ikea revealed 2 options in the PAX lineup - The PAX Lyngdal (and similar doors) and a smaller set ( I forget the name...something weird and swedish). Both potions were front mount (as opposed to mounting to the ceiling of the unit) and could be purchased w/o the cabinet. The Lyngdal units come in a number of sizes and were large enough for my opening.
The units were $500. I was in Ikea for about 3 hours measuring, pondering, and figuring before I made the go-ahead call. My condo has 93 different types of wood in it. I decided to stay away from the birch models and go for a metal/glass unit. For my 81x 96 inch opening, I bought a 93 x 98' model, which will give me a little top overhang.





Installation
The first step is to mount the frame. The most (only) important piece is the top mount. It is designed to mount on the top front of a PAX unit. The top mount has a 1" wide lip, which will need to be removed in order to mount the mount flush with the drywall. Time to break out hacksaw (or sheet metal break, cutoff wheel, etc). Plan to spend about 1-2 hours doing this.

(mount is upside down. Hacksaw is on the wall facing side)


Don't worry about the marks, you'll never see them.


Once this lip is removed, I drilled 10 1/4" holes (or the same size as your screw you want to mount the frame with) into the top mount for the bolts which will secure it. The bolts are required because we no longer have the top lip and pax frame to support the weight of the doors. They also position the mounts. Mechanical engineers won't like the bolts holding the unit and positioning it, sorry. Once this is done, the unit is tacked up so we can test fit it, center it, level it, and ensure it is at the right height with a piece of the door frame with the wheel installed.



Tip: assemble one side of the door to test fit it.

Tip: Align the mount in the center opening with the joining of the mount sides rather than trying to figure out if you're equi-distant from the closets sides on both ends. It will save you a big headache. Measure roughly opening width /2 on both ends, mark it, call the center of the opening 1/2 way between your two marks.

Tip: if you use toggle bolts. Mount the frame a 1/4" higher than you plan on because the toggle bolts will require a larger hole than the bolt to push the toggle through. The bolt will sit on the bottom of that hole.

Now that the unit is tacked up, level, and at the correct height, you'll note that the door stops have a bolt holding them on. This bolt is preventing the unit from sitting flush with the wall. Take a hammer and tap the door stops into the wall. This will mark their position in the drywall. Remove the mount and drill a 3/8" hole where the marks are in the wall from the door stop bolts.

Re-mount the mount to the wall. Make sure it's level. If it's not, widen the door stop holes with the drill and realign the mount. Push the mount flush with the wall. Remove your tack nails 1 by 1 and drill a 1/4" hole (or what ever you drilled above) through holes in the frame. Once the hole drilled, put screw in the hole to hold the frame. As you go, recheck that the mount is level and the door frame still fits right. Remove the frame.

Now widen the holes you drilled to accept the anchors. I used a toggle which required a 1/2" bit. I only had a 3/8" so I drilled those and widened them with the drill. Check the opening you make with one of your bolts.




Pre-insert the bolts and anchors into the frame.


Now mount the frame to the wall. Push the bolts through the wall and tighten. Then assemble a door, and fit it.



I'll post the rest once I complete it.

[ludes98]

I know you've already started, but since you are undertaking such a cool project, why aren't you enlarging the opening? The closet appears to be framed out and non load bearing so the only hassle is the drywall mess.

[jfranci3]

Cutting drywall and 2x4's is out of scope for this project. I'd really only gain about 10" on top, which isn't worth it.

[splatgirl]

looking forward to seeing your solution for the bottom rail/getting the doors to hang plumb

[jfranci3]

Me too! Plan A is a Johnson Hardware sliding door bottom bracket. Plan B is to mount a small board at the base and use the Ikea hardware. Plan B is though because it will be hard to percisly position the board as I do not have access to a Jointer to scale down the board as needed and It might not look super great.

[ludes98]

I was only thinking of enlarging the opening for aesthetics with the glass not for space. Looking forward to seeing the completed project! Love those doors, makes me wish I had a place/need for them.

[splatgirl]

I found that was the issue that ended up requiring the most thought when I did my hacked STORDAL room divider, but I considered all that you mention. I went with using half of a bottom rail (and conceding that I'd have one door basically fixed), but my application was quite a bit different so I had something to hook it on to in the middle. It worked out fine but I'm hoping you'll come up with a better more elegant solution that I can make work, too

[jfranci3]

ludes98 -
You're right on the wall showing thru, that's one of the reasons I'm considering the white paint/paper/vinyl/etc. Another reason is the closet lighting. The closet has an external switch and the closet lighting provides ambiance lighting for the place through the open top. It's really not hard to stick something white behind it to make the glass appear more frosted. So it's low on the concern o' meter.
Jon

[jfranci3]

Here are the finished doors. I just used a std sliding door bottom guide for 3/4" doors which you can find at most hardware stores. I removed the outside prong so it wouldn't show. Gravity holds the doors in.

The glass is more see thru in the photo than in person. It should be noted than there are some frosting defects in the glass which look like grease spots.

I had a few problems;
-In triming the sides, it wasn't clean. I had to use wall filler to plug the gaps and paint a bit on the sides.
-The sides don't provide 100% coverage on the side. I need to look at the ikea model to see what went wrong, but I think the either the pax unit side stick out or they're just cheap like that.

BTW, don't use a Dremel tool to cut the sides. Mine sucked then flaked out doing using the metal cutting wheel. Instead, get either a sawzaw or a mini grinder and a couple of cutoff wheels + clamps, gloves, and eyewear. Don't cut too much too fast, as the heat will contort the metal.