Installation of interior doors: how to avoid common mistakes

With the help of a slid­ing struc­ture, you can close almost any open­ing; there is expe­ri­ence in the man­u­fac­ture and instal­la­tion of sys­tems 6 m wide. Pho­to: UNION

Buy­ing a slid­ing inte­ri­or door mech­a­nism is not a prob­lem today — these prod­ucts are wide­ly rep­re­sent­ed in build­ing super­mar­kets, spe­cial­ized salons, and online stores. It will not be dif­fi­cult for mas­ter installers to final­ize the can­vas and assem­ble the struc­ture right on the site. But only on the con­di­tion that you did not make a mis­take when choos­ing the dimen­sions of the can­vas, pur­chased all the nec­es­sary details, deter­mined in advance the loca­tion and method of fas­ten­ing the guide track.

Methods for mounting interior doors

Pho­to: Astor Mobili. The load capac­i­ty of the vast major­i­ty of mech­a­nisms is up to 40 kg. Car­riages for doors of greater mass are dif­fi­cult to find on sale — they are ordered from the man­u­fac­tur­er or pur­chased with the door

The most pop­u­lar mount­ing meth­ods include fas­ten­ing the guide (track) to the wall above the open­ing and to the low­er sur­face of the lin­tel (lin­tel above the open­ing). Their advan­tages are that it is not required to pur­chase and install expen­sive mask­ing struc­tures, and in addi­tion, access to all crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the mech­a­nism is retained: for revi­sion and adjust­ment of the lat­ter, it is only nec­es­sary to remove the frame parts.

Along the wall

With this method, as a rule, first a hor­i­zon­tal wood­en bar is screwed to the wall above the open­ing (the screws are placed in incre­ments of up to 500 mm), to which the door guide is attached from below (the opti­mal screw pitch is 300 mm). You can do with­out a bar if you use met­al brack­ets; in this case, increased require­ments are imposed on the rigid­i­ty of the track (with a step of attach­ment points of 400 mm, the thick­ness of its walls should be at least 4 mm), but it is eas­i­er to reg­u­late the rel­a­tive dis­tance of the struc­ture from the wall. The guide must be per­fect­ly aligned hor­i­zon­tal­ly, oth­er­wise the web will not move even­ly.

Open track sys­tems are used as an unusu­al inte­ri­or decor. It should be borne in mind that the instal­la­tion of such a mech­a­nism may require fac­to­ry prepa­ra­tion of the blade (drilling holes, milling grooves)

The size of the sash is cho­sen so that it is 20–40 mm wider than the fin­ished open­ing (note that the wood­en frame nar­rows the pas­sage by about 20 mm). When buy­ing a stan­dard prod­uct, a gap often forms above the can­vas (after all, a slid­ing struc­ture does not require a box, the thick­ness of the bars of which is includ­ed in the work­ing draw­ings of the swing door block). A small gap (up to 30 mm) can be closed with a fram­ing bar. Anoth­er option is to build up the can­vas from below with a bar paint­ed in the col­or of the fin­ish. How­ev­er, the dif­fer­ence in shades is usu­al­ly clear­ly vis­i­ble (with the help of stains it is easy to imi­tate only wenge and rose­wood, and prob­lems arise with oth­er col­ors), so it is bet­ter to order a non-stan­dard can­vas with a height of 2050–2100 mm. True, you will have to pay an addi­tion­al 25% and wait for deliv­ery for at least a month.

As a rule, the open­ing is trimmed with addi­tion­al strips and plat­bands. They are glued to the wall with sil­i­cone sealant or polyurethane adhe­sive. The track is easy to dec­o­rate using the same ele­ments (a wide cas­ing com­plete­ly cov­ers the guide, you just need to make or order end caps).

Pho­to: UNION. Tem­pered glass doors are absolute­ly safe and, due to their con­sid­er­able mass, they iso­late the sounds of the speech range quite well.

Often, a stop beam is screwed to the wall, lim­it­ing the door’s move­ment in the direc­tion of clos­ing. If you equip this part with brush seals, the belt will stop more gen­tly (the stan­dard stop­pers of an inex­pen­sive mech­a­nism work with a notice­able blow that is trans­mit­ted to the track; as a result, the attach­ment points may even loosen). If you stick the brush­es also on the oppo­site side of the open­ing and above it, then you can sig­nif­i­cant­ly (up to 4 dB) increase the lev­el of sound insu­la­tion.

Pho­to: Bertolot­to Porte. When installing glass mod­els with a nar­row pro­file strap­ping, it is usu­al­ly not nec­es­sary to frame the open­ing

in the opening

This instal­la­tion method is suit­able only for wide (more than 150 cm) open­ings. A guide with two rails or two sin­gle-rail guides is attached to the lin­tel from below — the hung can­vas­es can move towards each oth­er, free­ing the right or left half of the open­ing (if you need to car­ry large items, the sash­es have to be dis­con­nect­ed from the car­riages). The advan­tage of this mount­ing scheme over the slid­ing one (along the wall) is that the first does not require free space on the sides of the open­ing. This solu­tion is per­fect for a dress­ing room or pantry.

Pho­to: Rimade­sio

In an open­ing with a width of 240 cm or more, you can install a door with three or more wings (up to six), equipped with a tele­scop­ic open­ing mech­a­nism (in one or two direc­tions). Such sys­tems are spec­tac­u­lar, but expen­sive; say, a Rezi­dent fit­tings kit for a glass tele­scop­ic door costs from 60,000 rubles. And so that the can­vas­es do not sway, you have to install a low­er guide, which vio­lates the integri­ty of the floor cov­er­ing and is also clogged with dust.

Three- and four-leaf designs are much more afford­able, in which only the mid­dle ele­ments are equipped with car­riages, and the extreme ones are motion­less­ly fixed.

In any case, when buy­ing can­vas­es mount­ed in the open­ing, it is nec­es­sary to take into account their over­lap, which should be about 20 mm. It is desir­able to close ver­ti­cal joints with brush seals.

Pho­to: Tre‑P & Tre-Piu. If the rede­vel­op­ment project pro­vides for the instal­la­tion of a sus­pend­ed or false ceil­ing, the door guide is easy to hide

Pho­to: Rimade­sio. Devel­op­ers of tele­scop­ic sys­tems tend to do with­out the bot­tom rail. To elim­i­nate the back­lash of the lead­ing blade, they build a spring-loaded roller into its low­er end. No less pop­u­lar is the design, in which there is an addi­tion­al flag attached with an L‑shaped brack­et to the dri­ven can­vas

Doors up to the ceil­ing are a non-stan­dard design solu­tion, the imple­men­ta­tion of which must be start­ed at the ini­tial stage of repair. You should take care of per­fect­ly even walls and the cor­rect geom­e­try of the open­ing (in this case, it is per­formed with­out a lin­tel), and in addi­tion, think about how to hide the guide. Often they use a dec­o­ra­tive anodized or paint­ed track (vari­ants of its loca­tion — along the wall or in the open­ing) or build a guide into the ceil­ing. For this pur­pose, it is attached to the ceil­ing before the start of fin­ish­ing work (met­al dow­els with a length of at least 40 mm should be used, locat­ed in incre­ments of 30–40 cm), and then a plas­ter­board or stretch ceil­ing is mount­ed in such a way that the track does not pro­trude beyond its plane.

Doors built into the wall

Pho­to: Rimade­sio. Retractable can­vas in the col­or of the walls — the per­fect solu­tion for an inte­ri­or in the style of min­i­mal­ism

Doors that retract into the wall prac­ti­cal­ly do not nar­row the open­ing (only the edge of the can­vas with a han­dle pro­trudes from the niche), while they do not need free space to open. But from the point of view of instal­la­tion, this solu­tion is con­sid­ered the most dif­fi­cult. You will need to pur­chase or design a pen­cil case, and then build it into an inte­ri­or par­ti­tion or install it over­lay on an exist­ing wall.

The fac­to­ry pre­fab­ri­cat­ed can­is­ter con­sists of gal­va­nized steel pro­files of com­plex cross-sec­tion with walls at least 0.7 mm thick. It is equipped with all nec­es­sary fas­ten­ers (for which holes are pro­vid­ed in the details) and a mech­a­nism for mov­ing the can­vas (can­vas­es) with the abil­i­ty to adjust the stop­pers after fin­ish­ing.

As a rule, the pen­cil case is sheathed with plas­ter­board or gyp­sum-fiber sheets, how­ev­er, there are mod­els for sale that are designed for plas­ter­ing (they have sheet steel walls cov­ered with a mesh). Man­u­fac­tur­ers (Eclisse, Crona, Open Space, etc.) offer a wide range of prod­ucts, and for any plan­ning solu­tion there will almost cer­tain­ly be a suit­able option, espe­cial­ly since the struc­ture can be com­plet­ed using con­ven­tion­al pro­files for plas­ter­boards. The cost of a case for a slid­ing door starts from 15 thou­sand rubles, a slid­ing door — from 28 thou­sand rubles, a tele­scop­ic one (with two leaves) — from 40 thou­sand rubles.

Pho­to: Bertolot­to Porte. For glass door mod­els, the dec­o­ra­tive track is anodized or paint­ed in the col­or of the leaf bind­ing

Pho­to: Barausse. Design­ers use large-sized mir­rored doors to visu­al­ly expand the bound­aries of the premis­es.

A home­made pen­cil case will cost less than a fin­ished one, but its assem­bly will take more time. In addi­tion, there is a risk that inex­pe­ri­enced crafts­men will build an insuf­fi­cient­ly strong struc­ture, which will begin to walk, due to which the mech­a­nism will jam.

Pho­to: Rimade­sio. The can­vas pock­et should not be wide, oth­er­wise unfin­ished sur­faces will become vis­i­ble

The case, made by the con­struc­tion method, is a sin­gle (when mount­ed on the wall) or dou­ble spaced (when installed as a par­ti­tion) frame made of rack pro­files 50 × 50 mm. A pock­et for the can­vas is made with a mar­gin of 20–25 mm in width, because the sash can be slight­ly warped and, in the absence of gaps, touch the racks.

Experts rec­om­mend pur­chas­ing fab­ric and fit­tings in advance so as not to be mis­tak­en with the size of the open­ing and how to prop­er­ly dri­ve the mech­a­nism before sheath­ing the frame: under the influ­ence of a load, the bear­ing parts can shift slight­ly, and then re-adjust­ment will be required
and/or rein­force­ment of attach­ment points.

Pho­to: Vladimir Grigoriev/Burda Media. The main thing when installing the car­ri­er beam and the track is to fol­low the screw pitch rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er.

The adjust­ing screws of the car­riages allow you to achieve the opti­mal clear­ance under the door — about 5 mm

The plas­tic guide box is fixed with screws 30–40 mm long

Stroke lim­iter fixed with expan­sion screw

Door weight

The mass of a vestibule (filled with card­board hon­ey­combs) door 240 cm high and 90 cm wide is 30–45 kg (a can­vas of such dimen­sions is assem­bled on the basis of a heavy rein­forced frame). A glass prod­uct of the same dimen­sions weighs 70–80 kg. The usu­al mech­a­nism is not able to ensure the smooth and qui­et move­ment of a heavy sash, not to men­tion the fact that it will run out of its resource very quick­ly. It is nec­es­sary to pur­chase spe­cial fit­tings — with rein­forced rails and car­riages; it is desir­able that the lat­ter be equipped with spring shock absorbers. Sim­i­lar prod­ucts are in the range of com­pa­nies such as Geze, Eclisse, Koblenz.

Pho­to: Eclise. Tele­scop­ic mod­els with­out a pen­cil case need a thrust bar that bridges the wide gap between the wall and the lead­ing sash. The track is dec­o­rat­ed with a cor­nice strip. From the side of the adja­cent room, plat­bands are mount­ed or the open­ing is left with­out a frame

5 tips for choosing a sliding door mechanism

The stan­dard mech­a­nism con­sists of a sin­gle-rail alu­minum track, two roller car­riages, a pair of door stops and a low­er flag, which is attached to the floor and insert­ed into a groove made in the low­er end of the leaf (which reduces sway­ing dur­ing move­ment). When pur­chas­ing a kit, please use the fol­low­ing guide­lines.

1. The declared load capac­i­ty of a pair of car­riages should be approx­i­mate­ly one and a half times the mass of the can­vas.
2. The required wall thick­ness of the guide is at least 2 mm.
3. Pur­chase car­riages with ball bear­ings, as well as with soft poly­mer rims, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce noise when the blade moves.
4. It is desir­able that the deliv­ery set includes a U‑shaped alu­minum pro­file, which ensures per­fect slid­ing of the flag (the groove milled in wood often has defects that cause jerks and bumps dur­ing move­ment).
5. It is worth equip­ping stop­pers or car­riages with rub­ber bumpers that soft­en the blow when open­ing and clos­ing.

Car­riages with a spring shock absorber and a trav­el lim­iter with a rub­ber “bumper” (a, b) pro­vide a soft stop of the web in extreme posi­tions, which reduces the load on the track attach­ment points. Dec­o­ra­tive mech­a­nisms made of chrome-plat­ed and stain­less steel com­plete both wood­en and glass doors (c, d)

Typical mistakes when installing a sliding door along a wall

1. Unre­li­able fas­ten­ing of the track or bear­ing beam (for exam­ple, with short dow­els in the plas­ter lay­er). Over time, these details can become loose, and then the can­vas will begin to touch the flag.
2. Set­ting the flag by eye, with­out a plumb line. As a result, the can­vas acquires a slope, moves hard­er and with a char­ac­ter­is­tic rustling.
3. Instal­la­tion with­out tak­ing into account the thick­ness of the frame of the open­ing: the door leaf scratch­es the archi­trav­es, there is no room for brush seals.
4. Unre­li­able fas­ten­ing of the thrust beam and the cor­nice strip. The fixed ele­ments of the slid­ing struc­ture are sub­ject to vibra­tion, under the influ­ence of which they often move from their places.
5. The guide rail is too low, which makes it impos­si­ble to adjust the height of the web (this may be nec­es­sary, for exam­ple, when replac­ing the floor cov­er­ing with a thick­er one).

• Source: Ideas for Your Home Magazine#206

Mate­r­i­al pre­pared

Vladimir Grig­oriev