Hanging Bi-fold Closet Doors

Warning:

When buying a house, be suspicious when the closet doors are not already hanging.

When I bought this house, it had these white bi-fold closet doors everywhere... well, in the two upstairs bedrooms and also to hide the laundry area. However, most of them were not hanging at the time. Someone told me, "Ah, these are easy to remount. You just..."

So, I bought the house.

I must have hung those doors 5 times in the first 3 months and they just kept falling off of their pivot joints, so I just gave up and let them stand there.

My nephew Callahan became the victim of one of those doors three or four years ago when one of them fell on top of him. Not good.

And really ... they were an eye-sore.

The problem seemed to be a little screw that held in the snugger that secures the upper pivot joint. No matter how hard I screwed that thing in, the joint kept sliding. Eventually, my screwdriver stripped the slot on the head of all my screws (the drive wasn't very deep and didn't offer very much torque resistance).

I drove all over Harrisonburg and Braodway looking for replacement screws: Lowes, Home Depot, Ace. I took the little screw with its stripped head and showed it to the associates at each location.

"I'm looking for this." In every location, we went over to the screw aisle and searched left to right, top to bottom through all the little drawers. No one had anything close to what I was looking for.

I searched online again and again. Couldn't find it.

More recently, I became resolved to fix those doors no matter what, even if it means replacing the hardware. But then it hit me: Don't replace the whole assembly. Just find the part that has the bolt in it. And here it is:

Remember, it's just the screw that I was after. Now I have 4 extra track sockets.

Some of the bottom pivots were also poorly installed, had wiggled their way loose, and left our home to start lives of their own. So, some of them also needed to be replaced.

Up they go ...




















Once we finished, the first thing that Power Dime Mommy said was, "It changes the whole room."

And so it does.