Hang Bifold doors in only a year!

You may remember that just before Christmas (a year ago - not this Christmas) I stumbled upon a deal on a pair of bi-fold doors, and was all excited about them, although unsure of what finish to put on them. In case you don't remember, here's that post... Bi-fold doors post from a year ago.

Well, since the weather has been so brutally cold this past week, and since there was nothing else on the "things to finish" portion of my 14 for 2014 list that could be accomplished without going out to the garage, I finally found myself backed into a corner and forced to do the doors.

I spent the better part of the week putting a clear gloss finish on the doors. Since there was only room to lay out 1 set of doors at a time, and there were two doors to do this became time consuming. Each coat took 1/2 hour of sanding and painting, and then 2 hours of drying time before the next could be applied. I did four coats of polyurethane on each face of the doors, and most doors I was able to do in a day if I could sneak down to work on them before work, at lunch, and again in the evening. That's a lot of work. But I had help...

First we took the doors apart so we could get at all the faces...

Buddy worked the screwdriver, but Cuppa was just there to learn. I was actually a little surprised at how well Buddy did with the screwdriver. he took out a bunch of screws without any help from me at all.

Once the doors were apart, we had to sand down the wood so that it was ready for painting. The soft pine would clog up the sandpaper really fast, but I found that soft sanding sponges worked well and didn't clog. We switched after the first face we did, and never looked back.

Sanding is lots of work, and it makes a mess. Once we were finished sanding, we would use the vacuum to clean up all the sawdust, and then we wiped everything down with a dry cloth. When there was no more dust, it was time to put on the 'paint.'

We used a high gloss, clear polyurethane because I am old school and cannot bring myself to hide the natural grain of wood. I need to overcome this compulsion.

After the paint dried, we had to sand it again, and then paint it again.

After enough painting and sanding was done, we were able to turn the doors over to do the other side. Then you had to start all over again.

Eventually the doors were done being painted and we could put them up in the boys' room.

First we had to get the closet ready though. The old closet doors were hollow core, flat paneled bifold doors. Unfortunately none of their hardware matched, so we ended up swapping everything out. In a nod to the previous owners of Frosthouse, here is hit-n-run remodeling at its finest...

A coat of paint over a porcelain knob does not hide the pattern on the porcelain knob.

Three colours of paint on the edge of the door. You can see the progression of design! Inside the closet is all dark green. I had to paint the door opening white since only half of it had been painted. Why not paint the whole thing? I mean, its not like it takes That Much  more work to open the closet door when you paint the room. Maybe paint the bottom 3" of the doors doors on both coats too.

Anyways... After prepping the door opening and removing all the hardware from the old doors, I laid out the hardware package for the new ones.

Following the instructions, we installed the track for the new door onto the top of the door opening.

Then we put the pegs in the corners of the doors.

And the bracket in the floor. We had to cut the carpet a little bit here.

And then the doors were ready to go up!

Yay! New closet doors! Now we need to order some knobs. The boys are quite distressed that the closet doors have no knobs, and I can't bring myself to reinstall the porcelain ones we took off. I'm thinking I'll get some fun boy ones from Lee Valley. Like these.

Or maybe these:

Or even these:

We'll have to place an order then wait and see when they arrive!