Sliding doors on rollers with their own hands

The tightness of standard urban apartments forces their owners to use a variety of devices and structures, the exploitation of which will save valuable living space. Making the sliding doors on the rollers with their own hands and installing them instead of the traditional swinging, the owner will be able to free space for the installation of furniture or simply increase the free space of the premises. In addition, sliding structures are often installed in large openings between rooms and become distinctive mobile partitions, allowing, if necessary, to divide them into different rooms or merge into one large hall.

Having worked out the principles of installing such a structure, it is possible to assemble and install sliding doors independently and save on attracting masters, it is possible if you have the tools at your fingertips and the owner possesses the stable skills of carpentry and locksmithing and due diligence.

Advantages and disadvantages of sliding door structures

suspension roller frame. The choice of specific sliding door models depends on the layout of the apartment and also on the design of the rooms. But before you buy interior sliding systems, you need to know not only about their positive qualities, but also about their weaknesses.

So, sliding doors have the following positive qualities:

• They give considerable saving of space of premises.
• Unlike the swing design, the sliding door will never be chaotically opened and closed from drafts.
• Such doors help even to visually expand a small apartment space.
• The advantage is the lack of thresholds in some types of similar constructions, which is extremely convenient if the apartment is occupied by elderly people or with disabilities, as well as small children.
• Sliding double-leaf door is able to divide the room into separate zones, which helps optimally use the space of a one-room apartment.

• With a competent approach, the sliding door is not so difficult to install and easy to operate.
• Sliding design is able to make a standard layout of the apartment individuality, aesthetically transform it.
• Thanks to modern technology, sliding doors are easy to automate, and this distinctive feature can be called one of the key advantages over swing structures.

However, it is equally important to know the "minuses" of such doors, since, having installed them, you will need to comply with certain conditions of their operation:

• The roller system and guide rail, along which the door leaf will move, must always be maintained in good condition and clean, otherwise they may fail, and one day the door will jam in one position.
• Usually the standard sliding design, in contrast to the swinging, is not able to soundly isolate the separated rooms, since there will be at least small gaps between the door frame and the door leaf.
• The door can not contain the smells of cooking, if it is planned to be installed at the entrance to the kitchen.
• All the parameters of the structure during its installation must be well measured, and its elements are perfectly positioned exactly vertically and horizontally, otherwise the door may be jammed. However, this requirement probably applies to any type of door structure.
• The installation of a double-leaf door is a more complicated process than consisting of a single leaf, since the moving webs will have to be very accurately adjusted not only to the doorway, but to each other.
• The high cost of sliding structures also can not be attributed to the merits.

Types of sliding doors

There are several types of sliding doors. They differ from each other in design, appearance and installation of the working mechanism.

All varieties of sliding doors have a common operating principle, which distinguishes them from swinging structures - they move along a horizontal line, along the door and the wall. But, these systems are divided among themselves into different types and can be:

- traditional sliding;

- cascading;

- folding - "accordion";

- Radius sliding.

Any of the existing structures can be single-leaf or multi-leaf. Thus, from two to four door leaves can be included in the multi-leaf system.

If the door has not yet been selected, then it is worth considering the characteristics of each type, and only then decide on the design.

Traditional sliding door-coupe

Traditional sliding doors are divided into suspended, cassette pendant, and having two guides - top and bottom.

• Construction with bottom and top guide

This type of sliding door is the most common, and is most often chosen for installation in apartments, since it is considered the most reliable, certainly with correctly exposed and fixed guides. In this design, one or more flaps move along the upper and lower rails.

It should be noted at once that this type of sliding door is quite difficult for self-assembly, since it is necessary to perfectly match the upper and lower guides.

The disadvantage of this system is the fact that the lower rail is mounted on the floor surface, that is, or the threshold will be formed, or the cavity will have to be cut. In the guiding profile that is installed in the floor, dust and small debris will be collected, which can obstruct, slow down, and sometimes even block the movement of the door leaf, so you will need to keep a very close eye on the cleanliness of this assembly.

• Suspended sliding doors

Suspended structures are also very popular, since they do not require the installation of a rail in the floor and do not have a threshold, but move only along the top guide.

suspension structure. The rail is fixed to the wall above the doorway or to the ceiling, depending on the height of the selected door and the room. The guide can be located openly or covered with a masking or decorative cover.

The door leaf in this version of the construction will be suspended, at a distance of 10 ÷ 15 mm from the wall, so you need to take into account the fact that one of the pieces of furniture will not be put to the wall in the direction of which the door will open.

Depending on how the interior will be decorated, the false panel, which will cover the upper guide, can be fixed only on the segment of moving the door or from wall to wall, and sometimes a similar "border" is placed around the perimeter of the room. In the latter case, it will serve as a decorative element of the interior and will serve, in addition, masking the curtain rod. The option of fixing the curb over all walls of the room is possible if the doorway is high enough on the wall.

• Suspended sliding cassette doors

This version of sliding doors can be suspended or move along two tracks. Its main difference from the previous versions is the location of rails and linen inside the doorway. That is, when moving the door along the guides, it will go into a niche arranged in a wall special for this purpose.

If such a design is chosen in a private house, it is usually envisaged in advance, when building walls or partitions. Well, in an apartment such a niche is formed from plasterboard construction, but in this case, you need to take into account that the size of the room will decrease by approximately 100 ÷ 120 mm.

The advantage of this option can be called a more tight fit of the front side of the door when it is closed and there is no open gap between the wall and the web, which means that the sound insulation of rooms will be an order of magnitude higher than in any other sliding structure.

In addition, by installing a similar type of door, you can free the wall and the space in front of it, adding to the interior aesthetics and comfort.

However, considering all the alterations that will need to be made by installing cassette sliding doors, it is clear that the total cost of their installation will be quite high, even if all the works are done on their own.

Cascading sliding structures

The cascading version of the sliding doors is arranged in the same way as the traditional one with upper and lower guides, but differs in that it consists of several sheets, each of which moves on its own rail. Therefore, such a system can expand in the form of a partition, dividing the room into two zones, or be assembled near one of the walls and to cover the room only by the width of one canvas.

Such systems are usually used as partitions, but they can easily become a wall with a door if only one of the panels is moved. These sliding structures are made from natural or polymeric glass of different shades more often, and has a height from the ceiling to the floor, so the lower rails are built into the floor, and the upper ones are fixed to the ceiling.

Very often such systems are used to create glazed verandas or terraces - there is always the possibility to turn a room into an open summer recreation area.

How it is possible to use the veranda or terrace

. Modern window and door constructions allow to fully use the premises of a house or annexes in the winter time, and in summer to transform their open cozy recreation areas. Example - sliding windows for terrace , about which is told in the special publication of our portal.

Sliding design - "accordion"

Sliding system "accordion" can act as a partition or door. It consists of several canvases connected by end-loops.

This is a rather complex design for self-manufacturing, and assembly is best done with the invitation of an experienced specialist.

The width of the door leaves can be different - it depends on the size of the opening and the free space that can be allocated for the construction in the folded form.

The "accordion" system can be installed in a standard or wide doorway, as well as as a partition dividing the room into zones. When installing it to perform the role of partitions, the guides are mounted on the floor and ceiling.

The characteristic drawbacks of this design include the almost complete absence of sound and heat insulation.

Radial sliding constructions

Sliding radial systems give the interior of any room a special charm, but for their installation it is necessary to create a plasterboard semicircular wall. This variety of designs can be used for installation in a doorway or serve as a full partition of the room, installed from ceiling to floor.

The radial version is mounted on the upper and lower guide, and can walk on the outer or inner side of the wall, and also be built into it, that is, empty inside the walls will be a cassette into which the doors will be hidden when they open.

A qualitatively constructed and properly installed design of this type can create a sufficiently high sound and heat insulation. However, if there is no experience in mounting a radial system of sliding doors and gypsum board structures, but there is a great desire to have such a decorative-functional element in the interior of your apartment, it is better to entrust its installation to an experienced master - an independent installation will be extremely difficult.

Manufacture and installation of a sliding door on rollers

Materials for assembling a suspended door structure

Suspension design is the simplest option for self-assembly, so it is worth considering how all the work is carried out and what materials will be needed for them.

• Depending on the size of the doorway, one or two door leaves are required. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the massiveness of the cloths, since the fitting elements will be selected according to this parameter, which should keep them on weight.

For a suspended structure, the web should have a larger size than the doorway.

• The upper guide rail is the rail on which the door leaves will move with the help of roller mechanisms attached to them. The length of the guide should be equal to the double width of one or two door leaves.

• A wooden beam, equal in length to the rail, and having a cross-sectional dimension of at least 50 × 50 mm - the rail will be fixed to it.
• Set of rollers and fasteners, selected by weight and thickness of one or two sheets.

• Quality boards or panels for framing a doorway - the manufacture of a box.
• Three clypees - two vertical and one horizontal, for the doorway, and a false panel that will close the bar and guide, fixed above the doorway.
• In the design, if desired, a door closer can be built in, it is installed to more easily close the door leaf.
• One or two sets of handles for the door.

• Anchors for securing the beam to the wall.
• Self-tapping screws.
• Fasteners for installation of platbands and false panels.
• Polyurethane foam mounting foam for filling gaps between the door frame and the wall.

The table below shows the dimensions of the one-leaf sliding door structure and the corresponding door opening dimensions:

Size of the door-compartment( width × height, mm)	Size of the doorway( width × height, mm)	External size of the door unit with casing( width × height, mm)	Height of fixing of the lumber bar from the clean floor, mm	Length of the mortgagelugs, mm
without frame	with frame
600 × 2000	540 × 1975	565 × 1975	704 × 2042	2047	1300
700 × 2000	640 × 1975	665 × 1975	804 × 2042	2047	1500
800 × 2000	740 × 1975	765 × 1975	904 × 2042	2047	1700
900 × 2000	840 × 1975	865 × 1975	1004 × 2042	2047	1900
600 × 2100	540 × 2075	565 × 2075	704 × 2142	2147	1300
700 × 2100	640 × 2075	665 × 2075	804 × 2142	2147	1500
800 × 2100	740 × 2075	765 × 2075	904 × 2142	2147	1700
900 × 2100	840 × 2075	865 × 2075	1004 × 2142	2147	1900
600× 2200	540 × 2175	540 × 2175	565 × 2175	700 × 2200	640 × 2175	665 × 2175	804 × 2242	2247	1500
800 × 2200	740 × 2175	765 × 2175	904 × 2242	2247	1700
900 × 2200	840 × 2175	865 × 2175	1004 × 2242	2247	1900

And this table shows similar parameters, but already for the two-leaf sliding door:

The size of the door-compartment( width × height, mm)	The size of the doorway( width × height, mm)	The external size of the door unit with casing( width × height, mm)	The height of fixing the lumber bar from the clean floor, mm	The length of the mortgagebeams, mm
without framing	with border
600 + 600 × 2000	1143 × 1975	1165 × 1975	1304 × 2042	2047	2500
700 + 700 × 2000	1343 × 1975	1365 × 1975	1504 × 2042	2047	2900
800 + 800 ×2000	1543 × 1975	1565 × 1975	1704 × 2042	2047	3300
900 + 900 × 2000	1743 × 1975	1765 × 1975	1904 × 2042	2047	3700
600 + 600 × 2100	1143 × 2075	1304 × 2142	1,443 × 2075	1365 × 2075	1504 × 2142	2147	2900
800 + 800 × 2100	1543 × 2075	1565 × 2075	1704 × 2142	2147	3300
900 +900 × 2100	1743 × 2075	1,765 × 2075	2147	3700
600 + 600 × 2200	1143 × 2175	1165 × 2175	1304 × 2242	2247	2500
700 + 700 × 2200	1343 × 2175	1365 × 2175	1504 ×2242	2247	2900
800 + 800 × 2200	1543 × 2175	1565 × 2175	1704 × 2242	2247	3300
900 + 900 × 2200	1743 × 2175	1765 × 2175	1904 × 2242	2247	3700

If there is no certainty that the door leaf will be manufactured on its own with the necessaryquality, it is better to purchase it infinished form, as the doors made on professional equipment, will look much more spectacular.

Tools for work

Now about the tools, without which it will not be possible to make a door system and make its installation.

The list of minimum required includes the following names:

• Electric drill( perforator) with drills for wood and concrete.
• Circular saw, electric jig saw and hand hacksaw.
• Screwdriver.
• Construction level, plumb line, ruler per 1000 mm, gon, roulette, folding meter.
• Electric or conventional plane.
• Manual milling machine with a set of necessary milling cutters.
• Hammer, chisel, pliers.

Manufacture of door leaf

If the door is to be manufactured independently, it is necessary to know what it can be made of, and what models of canvases can be used in this design.

Suspended doors can be solid, paneled or with the use of artificial glass, installed in a frame with a different number of jumpers. Solid canvas can be made from massive boards, chipboard or well-treated wooden beams and plywood. It should be noted that all these materials have a rather large massiveness, therefore ready-made versions of canvas for hanging doors are often made with the use of high-quality plastic or metal, which is used as a frame for installation in it of transparent inserts of synthetic glass.

. In any case, whether the doors will be purchased ready-made or manufactured independently, the parameters of the fabric should be selected depending on the size of the doorway. The exact proportions of these dimensions can be found in the above tables.

For example, for a doorway with a single sheet 865 × 2175 mm in size, with a box installed in it, a door with a size of 900 × 2200 mm is required, and when installing a bicuspid design in an aperture measuring 1765 × 2175 mm, the cloth must be 900+900 × 2200 mm.

If a chipboard panel of the right size is purchased as a blank for the door, it can be made easier by cutting one or more windows in it, then grind the edges of the chip and install a thin plywood or glass in them.

The process for manufacturing glazed or lightweight fabric from chipboard is performed as follows:

• The panel for the beginning is marked. In this case, it is necessary to observe the condition that from the edges in any case it is necessary to retreat not less than 150 mm. Thus, the edging of the door leaf made of particleboard should not be this size already.
• After the marking, the inner parts of the panel are sawed off with electric jig saw. In order to produce this process, a hole is drilled in one of the marking angles, then a jig saw blade is inserted into it, and careful cutting of the marked panel parts is made.
• Next, you need to qualitatively process the internal edges, obtained after sawing openings, otherwise they will look messy. This work can be done in two ways - to process the edges with a milling cutter or to refine it with a relief bead. The bead is cut to the size of the windows, then glued or nailed around the perimeter on one side of the panel.

• . Further, by the size of the window, a glass or insert is cut from the plywood, and it is installed into it, pressing against the fixed bead. After that, the inserts on the other side are fixed with a second bead.
• The end surfaces of the door leaf from the chipboard can be ennobled with a special decorative thermal tape, which is glued with a conventional iron.
• If plywood inserts are installed in the cut-out windows, they can be adjusted to the general color before the installation by painting, staining or laminating. Shtapiki also must have a color that is close to all elements of the door design.
• Doors can also be made of beams of different sizes in section, but the thickness of the frame frame should not be more than 30 mm.

The bar for making such a door leaf must be of high quality and well-finished.

The beam from which the inner frame lintels will be made must have a smaller or the same thickness as the frame. The size of the glazing bead and the thickness of the panels to be installed in the formed windows must be thought out in advance, since the first one should not protrude outward from the surface of the whole door leaf.

It should be noted that the manufacture of a frame door from the timber is a more complicated process, since all the frame elements are fastened together with the utmost precision and reliability, otherwise the finished fabric can "lead", that is, its frame is deformed.

• There are several ways of connecting the bar, but the most popular are in the "half tree" and "in the paw".They are quite simple in sawing, they keep the structure well from deformation and securely fasten the elements together.

It is better, if the bars will be fastened together not by metal screws or even more so by nails, but by special wooden nagels that are driven into holes drilled through by the diameter of the glued joints of the bars. For each of these door frame assemblies, two diagonally mounted nagels must be used.

• nail. In the lower end part of the blade, for its entire width, the groove for the flag roller or, as it is called differently, of the lower door lock, is milled.

Assembling the

Suspension System When the door leaf is ready, it is necessary to fasten the fittings, such as roller mechanisms, special locks or handles, which are different from those that are installed in the usual swing structures. In any sliding door, the handles are recessed into the canvas, since they do not have to interfere with its movement.

• The first step is marking the location of the handle on both sides of the door leaf. It should be located at a distance of 35 ÷ 50 mm from the vertical edge of the panel.
• After this, from the marked line the width of the nest and its height are marked. Further, from the top point of the marking, a distance equal to half the width of the future hole is measured - this point will be the center of the circle, which is drilled with the help of a drill bit of the desired diameter.

• The same process is carried out from the underside of the marked socket for the handle. There should be two blind holes, having a depth at which the handle will be recessed into the canvas.
• Then, the wood between the two crowns is rounded by grooves, using a router or a chisel and a hammer.

• Handles in sliding constructions are fixed in cut-out with the help of glue, for example "liquid nails", or snap into special fasteners, which are previously screwed into the resulting opening.
• The next step on the upper front side of the door leaf, you need to mark and fasten the roller mechanisms with self-tapping screws. Under them, most likely, it is necessary to choose a router( chisel) figured grooves.
• The rollers must be fixed at a certain distance from the edges of the door leaf. This parameter is indicated in the instruction attached to the set of metal fittings.

• Now the ready door can be set aside for the time being, and to improve the doorway, of course, if it does not already have a door frame installed.
• It is much easier to assemble and install a box for sliding doors than for swinging structures, as it consists of three absolutely flat elements - two vertical and one horizontal boards( panels) fastened together by long self-tapping screws.

The box can be made of a massive board or chipboard - this factor does not play a big role in this case, since there is no load on the mounted structure. Its only purpose is to give the doorway a neat and aesthetic appearance.

• A fastened box is installed in the doorway and wedged by wooden spacers that are driven between its panels and the wall to achieve the ideal verticality and horizontality of the walls.

Control of the position of the panels of the box is carried out with the help of a construction level and a plumb line. When the design is installed perfectly accurately, it is fixed to the walls. This can be done by drilling through the holes in the cartons of the box or by fastening the metal covers to the end faces of the boards and to the wall.

• Next, on the prepared bar, the length equal to the double width of the door leaf, the metal guide for the rollers is fixed with the help of self-tapping screws.
• In the bar, holes are drilled in advance, through which it will be fixed on the wall.
• After this, roller mechanisms are mounted in the guide rail, fixed to the door.

• The whole structure is attached to the doorway, leveled, if necessary, temporarily supported by wooden wedges, and then the bar is tightly screwed to the wall.
• Next, the door moves to the one and the other side of the rail to determine the locations at the beginning and end of the rail, where the travel stops or stoppers for the web will be secured. Stoppers in different models of doors can have a different design.

• The next step ahead of the open door, in the lower end part of it, into the cut groove, is installed and screwed to the floor a flag roller. It must be perfectly flat under the upper guide rail.

This lower stopper does not allow the door leaf to sideways, that is, it does not allow its lateral vibrations.

• Next, the clearances between the wall and the doors of the door frame are filled with mounting foam. After drying, the surpluses are cut off.
• Then the beam and guide rail are decorated with a false panel, and the gaps between the door frame and the wall are lintels.

In this case, installation of the simplest sliding hanging structure, not complicated by unnecessary elements, was presented. Therefore, the installation of such a system seems to be quite affordable for independent execution by any home master, naturally, provided all the nuances are taken into account and technological recommendations are implemented.

Video: Another example of installation of the

suspension roller frame