Who makes a door like this?

January 10, 2014 9:26 PM

I would like to take the massive sliding doors off my closet, but they seem to be some sort of old-fashioned non-removable monsters. Since they're so big it's a pain to see more than 25% of my clothes at a time, which seems like unnecessary complication.. They're not attached to the rail at the bottom, but the top rail is so tightly fastened that I can't just lift the doors up and off, as most of the online advice seems to be. I tried to unscrew the front door and just angle it out of the the closet frame, but whatever piece is holding it to the roller extends so far into the door that I wasn't able to pull it out. (Now of course I am not having luck at re-screwing the door into the roller, so that's a fun situation). Anyone dealt with this type of door before? I'm renting the apartment, so ideally I'd like to just prop the doors against the bedroom wall or something and hang a curtain in front of the closet. So I can't destroy the doors or anything. Although I have been tempted.
posted by lockstitch to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

I suspect that you might be able to lift them off the rails if you angle the door you wish to remove out into the room some first; that's what I've had to do to get old closet doors off the tracks sometimes. You may or may not need to remove the faceplate at the top of the closet that hides the tracks.
posted by Aleyn at 9:38 PM on January 10, 2014

Best answer: ha! I have those exact doors. Probably.

Go inside the closet and look near the ends of the top rails. There will be a tiny, really small indentation near the end where you can lift the wheels holding up the door off the railing. They won't come out anywhere else. So:

You do the front door first since they need to swing forward to do this.

step 1: loosen the screws holding the bottom guides in place, slide them up, re-tighten screws to hold them up
step 2: slide the door over, back it up a bit and then lift the wheel nearer the end up and out of the rail
step 3: this is sort of tricky. holding the door up, roll it down to the other end, then take the other wheel out via the little dip at that end.

The front door should now be off, repeat for the rear door.

But the tiny indentation near the ends of the upper tracks is the key to getting the wheels out of the track.
posted by GuyZero at 9:40 PM on January 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

Have you tried lifting the back door off its rail first? It looks like the front one is pretty snug against it and might be able to move more with the back door out.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:41 PM on January 10, 2014

Response by poster: GuyZero you're a genius! Totally worked once I found the indentations. Thanks!
posted by lockstitch at 9:48 PM on January 10, 2014

it's a crazy coincidence that I recently repainted 3 sets of doors pretty much exactly like that and I had to unmount all of them first. awesome that it worked for you!
posted by GuyZero at 9:52 PM on January 10, 2014