How to Maintain and Fix Sliding Doors The two types of doors that are easiest to open don’t have hinges at all; instead, they slide on tracks. Sliding-glass doors are a popular feature in rooms with decks or patios because their full-length glass panels open the room visually to the great outdoors while providing easy access to the outside. Interior sliding doors are frequently used for closets and pantries, and sometimes to conceal water heaters and furnaces. You can remove sliding-door panels easily to gain complete access to what’s behind them. Follow simple repairs and maintenance procedures to keep your sliding doors on track. Patio doors slide horizontally — or at least they’re supposed to. All too often, these big, pesky contraptions stubbornly resist opening, and getting outside becomes about as easy as dragging a refrigerator through a sandbox. The most common cause of a sticking patio door is debris in the lower track. This channel easily becomes clogged with dirt and leaves because people and pets walk over it whenever they go in or out.
Each time you vacuum your floors, use a small brush attachment or cordless vacuum to clean the sliding-door tracks. Apply a lubricant to both upper and lower tracks to keep the door hardware clean and operating freely. In addition to cleaning and lubricating sliding-door tracks, you want to lubricate the door lock. The best way to lubricate any lock is to disassemble it and use an aerosol lubricant to flush away grime and coat the moving parts of the lock. Sometimes, patio doors become hard to open even when the track is clean. In these cases, the problem is usually that the rollers at the bottom of the door have started to rub against the track. The rollers at the top can also wear down, lowering the bottom of the door so that it rubs on the track. Most sliding doors have a mechanism called an adjusting screw located at the bottom of the door ends. Turning this screw raises or lowers the roller. Give the screw a clockwise turn and test to see whether the door slides easier.
If the door becomes even harder to open, turn the screw in the opposite direction. After a bit of adjustment, the door should roll easily without rubbing on the bottom track. Sliding closet doors operate on rollers that are positioned in tracks at the top jamb and floor, allowing the doors to bypass each other in the tracks. Because sliding doors don’t fold out the way bifold doors do, they allow access to only half the width of the opening at a time. To clean and lubricate the hardware of a sliding closet door, use a stiff brush, a toothbrush, or a hand vacuum to clean dust from the tracks. Use an aerosol lubricant to lubricate all the door rollers. If the rollers are damaged, install replacement rollers (available at home centers). If the door doesn’t hang level, leaving an uneven gap between the door and door frame, look for an adjustable mounting screw at the inside top of each door. Use a screwdriver to adjust the mounting screw and even out the door. A new product breakthrough in the folding door industry.
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Measuring your opening first will help you determine if you can buy a single door or pair of doors that will fit without either cutting the doors to fit or modifying the opening to size. The widths of finished openings that will allow the easy install of bifold doors are: 18", 24", 30", 36", 48", 60", 72". The doors when measured are actually slightly narrower to allow for them to clear the sides of the opening when they start to fold while opening or closing. The standard finished opening height on all of these doors is 80-3/4". There is some adjustment in height that can be made on the door hardware so +/- 3/8" from the 80-3/4" is do able without cutting the door. TIP: If the opening you want to use is a little larger than needed, you can sometimes add a trim piece of wood around the outer inside edge of the opening to hide the fact that the door does not actually reach the outer edges of the opening. If you must cut the width of your doors down to fit, I do not recommend cutting more than 1/4" off of each outer end, as this makes the door operate poorly.
TIP: Once you figure out how much you need to trim off the width, do not cut it all off of one edge. Divide it in two and take even amounts off each outside edge. If you need to cut the height off the doors be careful not to cut too much off as there are holes predrilled in the top and bottom that door hardware fits into and you need this to remain structurally sound in order for the door to operate and last a few years. If you must cut to much off that, these hole become weak, then remove the weak piece and glue in a replacement piece of wood and drill new holes to match. So now that you have your doors ready to hang it is vey simple. First along the top edge of the door opening mark a straight line from one side to the other measured in at 2" from the front edge. Then decide which side of the opening the door will fold open to. On this side at the floor mark a small line in 2" from the front edge of the opening. Remove the hardware that came with the door from it's packaging and insert the plastic top slide into the metal track then hold that track centered on the line you marked on the top of the door opening (the metal bracket goes on the end where the door folds to when opening it up).
The metal track is usually a little sorter than the width of the opening so center it in the width of the opening. Use 3-4 screws to hold it in place. Now take the "L" shaped metal bracket and center it on the mark you put near the floor and place 2 screws (flat head) through it into the wall and 1 into the floor if possible. Now lay your door down on the floor and insert the pivot pins. There are two top pins and they are spring loaded, place one in each hole you find in the top edge of the door. The bottom pin is treaded into a plastic sleeve. Look at the bottom of the door and insert it in the hole which is going to be on the same side of the door that the door will fold to when opening. You may need to tap these with a hammer lightly to fit them into the door holes. Now that the pins are in and the top track and bottom bracket are installed it is time to install the door in the opening. Stand the door up on end and fold it in half at the hinge, pick the door up slightly and set the bottom pin down onto the floor bracket.
With the door pin resting in the bracket use your fingers to depress the two top pins and align one with the hole that is in the metal bracket on the track and one into the sliding guide in the track. To adjust the height slightly lift the door and tread the bottom pivot pin the direction you need to move the door. To adjust the door side to side slightly lift the door and alter the position of the pin in the bottom bracket loosen the set screw in the top pivot bracket and slide door the retighten set screw. The door hardware should have included a knob, you will probably find it to be really cheap looking so what I do is use a kitchen cabinet knob that I buy separately. You will need to drill a small hole just big enough for the mounting screw on the knob you purchased (usually 3/16") through the leading door panel about 36'' up from the floor and depending on the style of door you have about 1'' from the side where the hinges are (see photo). You will find this seems like a lot to remember when reading this article, but once you have the door in front of you and all the hardware everything I have said should make a lot more sense.