Interior French Doors, Custom Work.

Posted by Dov Shapira+ on July 1, 2015 in My personal work, Portfolio | 105 comments

Interior sliding French doors

Interior sliding French door

Recently I met a general contractor in the Phoenix area, he asked me to help him with doors.

The contractor and I met, he told me he is doing a total renovation to a house that had a bad water flood damage.

In the house there is an opening of eight feet wide by eight feet tall (floor to ceiling).
He said he is going to reduce the height to seven feet and asked me to come up with a plan for
Installing four French doors. The opening is between the hallway and office room.

The idea is to install two doors that will be totally fixed on each side of the opening and two doors that will slide on a track that will be mounted above the doors. The track maker is ‘Johnson‘.

Sliding door hardware by ‘Johnson’

French doors installed with the factory masking film over the glass panes.

I gave the contractor the  bid a long with a plan, he liked it and asked me to order the doors.

I ordered from ‘Masonite‘ four 24 inches wide doors with factory white primer. The doors came with plastic film, covering the glass panes for protection.

I bought lumber to create the jamb (The frame around the doors).
I screwed the frame to the two fixed doors and I installed this unit in the opening.
Next step I installed a high quality track and hardware and hung the two sliding doors.

The tricky part was to calculate so the sliding doors tops and the fixed doors are at the same height so all the lines are lining up perfectly. I had to take off the sliding doors about two and half inches from the bottom to accommodate for the track, hardware and the floor guide.

Then I installed a wood valance on each side to hide the track.
Another tricky part was installing the floor guides to keep the doors from swinging..

With a router I made a grove at the bottom of the sliding doors.

Floor guide

Under the doors I installed an upside down a T shape (about three inch long) a floor guide into the floor.

The doors must meet each other at the center perfectly when they are closed and must overlap the two fixed doors perfectly when they are wide open.

At last I drilled three quarters of an inch holes for the installation of the finger recessed pull.

The contractor is going to finish it up, meaning, remove the doors, painting and installing trim around the frame.

Shapira Builders give free estimates.

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