Building a fitted Wardrobe- Help and guidance needed!

[Benje]

Ok, in the main bedroom I have an alcove which is 1520mm Wide, and about

500mm deep. Its time to redecorate and I've been playing with the idea of fitting some fitted wardrobes into the space.

Ideally what I would like is sliding doors (2 or 3???)

Question is how hard are they to fit? I've seen the runners advertised, but what sort of doors do you use?? Can anyone point me to a website offering guidance or somewhere that sells these doors??

Final question is how do you mount these runners? Directly to thefloor boards? and what about the top runners? I'm assuming you would need a piece of MDF or something for the top and youd mount the runners onto that, thing is though hpw do you attach the MDF to the ceiling???

TIA

Ben

[David W.E. Roberts]

Go and visit your local Homebase or B&Q. They have a selection of sliding doors, sliding door tracks, and leaflets telling you how to fix them.

Briefly, you screw the bottom track to the floorboards (through the carpet if you have one). You fix the top track to the ceiling. However if the ceiling is higher than the maximum height of the doors you will have to fit spacing pieces between the ceiling and the top track. These are offered as options with the door kits. You will then have to conceal the spacing pieces with a strip of MDF which fits to the spacers. If the track runs parallel to but not under a joist you will probably have to go into the room above/loft and fit cross pieces between the joists to give you something to fix to.

500mm is a bit tight - our doors are 550mm away from the wall and you can just hang a jacket sideways on. Any tighter and you have to hand the clothes at an angle on the rail to shut the door.

If you are building full height wardrobes consider having two rails one above the other - that way you can get in two rows of shirts, jackets etc.

HTH Dave R

[Roger Mills]

I prefer bi-fold doors to sliding - because they give far better access when open, but still don't stick out too far into the room. You can get kits for these - with all the runners, hinges and fulcrum pins. The weight is taken by the bottom fulcum pin of each folding door, and motion is guided by a pin at the diagonal top corner of the other leaf, which slides in a channel. The channel has to be mounted on the ceiling - or on the underside of the top of the opening if this isn't the ceiling.

You can make the doors out of conti-board or whatever - chosing a leaf width which is a quarter of the total opening (but allowing for clearances).

Incidentally, 500mm sounds a bit tight for the depth of a wardrobe. You really need 600 - otherwise you can't comfortably get coat-hangers in end-on.

HTH, Roger

[Chris J Dixon]

3 is usually a bad idea, since there are generally only two tracks, so the unobscured area at any time is less than 1/3 of the width.

Chris

[James Hart]

Not if you use 3 tracks, although that might look a little lop sided. My sister had 3 on 2 tracks in her bedroom, 2 smaller ones and 1 large one in front, the opening was nearly half the width of the wardrobe, certainly a useful increase on the standard even thirds.

[Owain]

"David W.E. Roberts" wrote | If you are building full height wardrobes consider having two rails | one above the other - that way you can get in two rows of shirts, | jackets etc.

If you have the ceiling height, three rails can be better use of space than a top shelf, with the topmost rail being used for out-of-season garments stored on hangers in garment bags. They don't get crushed like clothes stored on shelves on on top of the wardrobe in suitcases, and it's easier and quicker to get down an item when its required.

Also have a gap at the end of the two lower rails, so there is a full-height section for morning and evening tails. If you try and store tail coats on a waist height rail the tails get squashed by hat-boxes at the bottom.

Owain

[Michael Mcneil]

Interesting absense of height measurements here????