The Nightmare of the Closet Doors

One thing that has been driving me nuts since we bought our house is the closet in the guest bedroom. When we first did the walk-through, it looked like the doors were just off the track; I figured it would be easy enough to put them back up. When we moved it, I tried putting the doors back on the track. Well, I couldn't. The track was bent up really badly. OK, so next step. Buy a new track. I measured the doors, took my measurements to Lowe's....they did not have a large enough track. I took my measurements to Home Depot and the guy sold me a track.

"Are you sure this is big enoug?" I asked the guy. "My doors are an inch and a half thick and this says 1 3/8."

Home Depot man is sure.

Well, guess what. Track is 48" long and my closet opening is 45 1/2. All I have to do is cut it with a hack saw, easy as pie according to Home Depot guy.

I don't know who can cut through that with a hack saw but Joseph and I could not.

I was able to use my dremel tool, but that took me a good 15 minutes...and it was 15 minutes where I was a little scared that I was going to cut myself or get hit with a flying shard.

So I have my new track cut, I screw it into my closet (which is not easy....your arms start to feel funny for lack of blood flow from holding them up with a heavy drill) and I get my closet doors.

The closet doors go up. And they won't move because they are too close together. I force the front one to move and I end up scratching up the back one with the screws from the wheels.

DANGIT! The stupid track is too small and no one has one big enough. And Home Depot guy is an idiot. And I am an idiot for believing him.

Next step, buy new, smaller closet doors. Now, I waited a couple months because I was just sick of it. But Joseph's family is coming into town and his brother and sister are going to be staying with us, so we have been working on the guest bedroom. It is painted (see previous post) and we decided we would tackle the closet doors finally. We got two doors at Lowe's and some door pulls.

I am drilling a hole in the door for my door-pull.

I had to use a screwdriver to pop out the wood so that I could put my door-pull in.

It looks GOOD.

Here is Joseph screwing on the wheels to the top. We figured we were almost done. Oh, but it just can't be that easy. We got the doors into the house (we drilled the holes in the garage) and put the back one on. We were not able to get the outside door on. We pushed and pulled, grunted and swore for about half an hour. Why did the bigger doors go up but my smaller ones won't??? Finally, I stood the door up and took a look at it. The wheels would not meet the track....the track was too close to the front facade (see below picture for the facade). The reason the wheel on the old doors worked was because the metal bent forward so that the door was further back, away from the facade.

So, we had to move the track.

Unscrewing the track so that we can screw it back in.

The doors are FINALLY up!!! That is Joseph peeking out.

And you know what, they're not even painted. I don't even care anymore....we'll do it later. I am just SO HAPPY we have closet doors. I may have cried a little. And they are flush to the wall so we did a DANG good job.