Making a Bi-Fold Door :: Salvaged from a Solid Wood Door

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The Pocketless Door Experiment: a Reprise

I had my fun, and free reign to try anything I wanted with the door on our newly remodeled powder room. I posted previously, in three parts, and lost you as I blathered on not only about the door itself, but about my methods and my means, my history and my place. Back story I will call it, about a pivoting barn (or pocketless) door.

Straight up, though — the pocketless door experiment was a failure. I still maintain that the pocketless door experiment might have worked, somewhere, but not in this house. Not as the powder room door here. And really that’s all you need to know here.

More than a Door :: BackStory

Several space considerations had to be made early on in this project. Even before we began gutting, we noticed the original door when swung open slapped the bowl of the sky blue toilet here. (I always wonder how something like this happens – poor planning, I guess.)

Note: Info on Flipping Door Hinges and its swing. Always an option.

Knowing that we didn’t want to get involved with moving any part of the cast iron plumbing, we decided that I would simply cut the existing door in half. And mount it as a mini-French – two smaller doors hinged one each from both jambs. Functional, unique – a perfect fit for this house and our style. The plan from the beginning.

With this detail decided, we proceeded to rough-in the space. We placed electrical switches and outlets just out of a half a door’s reach. I set the plumbing for pedestal sink where I wanted. It would not be affected by this door configuration, and vice versa.

-The Stack Attack

Another feature of our powder room — the stack. Yes, the house’s main WV (waste & vent) stack, in cast iron too. It comes right down and through this bath. In these situations, and you find them often in older houses, this three-inch pipe would eventually be concealed with a chase.

-Every Inch of Wiggle Room Matters

I gutted and re-framed this door opening. I could have shrunk the opening a little, calling for a 28″ (2-4) door instead of the 30″ (2-6) door that I had on hand.

While I did have this idea (plan B) in the remote outskirts of my mind, my course was decided upon. It didn’t get the priority that maybe it should have. So the framing went in, and while I gave myself about an extra ¾”, I wished later that I framed instead for a standard-sized 28″ door.

The Toilet & Other Matters

The placement of this toilet was very limiting. It was in clear shot of a standard door’s swing from one side. On the other, it was confined by the chase for my WV.

To complicate matters, I wanted that chase to do double duty. I wanted it to hold custom cubbies. To do this, I would need to frame it up in 2×4 as opposed to 2×3. (The 2x3s of course could have given me up to an inch more in usable space.) The cubbies built into the recesses of the blocking here. I needed the additional depth provided by the 2x4s.

I explored the idea of using a 2-inch offset flange on the toilet. This would have given me additional clearance off a 30-inch door. In the end, though, I was opposed to this mainly because the openings on these offsets themselves shrink. And hey, living with a three- and a five-year-old, you never know what could go down, or get stuck, in a toilet drain.

But in the end, We Don’t Speak French … Doors

When it finally came time, my wife and I met again to discuss the pros and cons of different door configurations. Yep, and guess what – the toilet I ultimately installed was still in the way of a hinged door’s swing. So just re-installing the door was still out.

Because of a minor obstruction created by the wall/wainscot treatment (pictured above), the sink-side portion of the mini-French would probably not swing a full 180 degrees. This translates, here, to less than textbook clearance (21″ by code, 30″ in design sense) at the front of the sink.

While we thought this would be easy enough to live with, we continued to discuss other options. Then it was said. There is always the bi-fold door.

So . . . Making a Bi-Fold Door

Let me start by saying that I really am not a door-maker. I share this only to tell you what I did and that it can be done.

To make the bi-fold, I started by cutting my 30″ (less a few fractions of inch from previous adjustments) door in half. I did this by placing it on my temporarily work bench and clamping a straight 2×4 over it from both ends of the table. For added insurance, as is often necessary with long guided rips – I placed a drywall screen down through the 2×4 into the door’s center rail. (I would putty it later.)

I’ll also put out that tracks and  track saws have since this article was originally posted have become more popular. This was just my improv at the time.

I attempted to find the exact center by taking measurements in multiple locations along the door’s height. Since, however, this door had been worked on even before I got to it, I could not depend on these measurements. I quickly scrapped that idea and used instead measurements off of the doors raised panels. I made marks in 3 places along the door and ran a line up the door’s center stile.

Using my circular saw, I made a straight/flat rip cut along this line. This cut revealed the large wafers, biscuits, which hold the door’s panels in place. (Hopefully the picture at right shows this. And anyone with knowledge of the correct term, please chime in.)

The fear all along with cutting a door in half (I haven’t done this one before) is that it, in the end, would simply fall apart. To neutralize risk of this – I made additional cuts at the inside edges of the door pieces, and added 5/8″ S4S. I glued and tacked this to the edges. With just a little sander work, I had two equally sized door panels.

Bi-Fold Hinges

For the fold, I could have chosen non-mortise bi-fold door hinges. The main benefit of these hinges is a cut-out in one side allowing the two hinge plates to mate perfectly. Fearing, though, this style of hinge would not be sturdy enough to hold my fir door, I instead chose to mortise for and install three 3 1/2″ square corner hinges.

To do this, I flipped my radius corner mortise jig over. This allowed for squared cutting across the entire edge of my door panels. (This door coincidentally was a non-standard 1 and ¼” thick.)

-Mortising for Hinges

For this procedure, I always try to remember that you should recess the entire face of the hinge. (You can mark your depth on your door panel by holding the hinge up next to it.) I have trained myself especially with my low-end plunge router to go a little shallow on these cuts, at about 3/32 of an inch.

I paired my doors, marked for my mortises – 7″ from the top, 11″ from the bottom. At a distance splitting them for the center, I made my mortise cuts. I assembled the doors and found that in this case I went a little too shallow. There was light passing through the center where the doors met. This would not necessarily be desirable for a bathroom door. So I went to work with a one-inch chisel, beveled-side face up – as to take minimal amounts out of the recesses.

Editor’s Note: You can find more about mortising hinges in our article – Hanging a Door Slab.

This took some time, but generally it worked. If anything I might have went a little too deep here. Later, when the door was finally hung, it was kicking back just slightly when shut.

Oh well, I said to myself, with all I have gone through with this door, and even today – still searching for pivoting pocketless door hangers, good enough. I added an additional surface-mount bolt latch at the top of the door just to the latch side of the fold.