The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

The Practical Built In Funiture

Sliding Doors

Another important item, especially in connection with kitchen cabinets, is the sliding door. In the case of doors that are quite small, all you need is a pair of guides, top and bottom, well soaped or waxed.

But for doors of full-sized cabinets that get a lot of opening and closing it pays to use hardware (see Fig. 25). The typical sliding-door equipment consists of a grooved track (Fig. 25a) above each door in which run the small rollers attached to the door top. The tracks,single or double, are screwed to the under side of the cabinet top. A flange on the track comes down far enough to hide the top edge of the cabinet door. The rollers are attached to little brackets that screw to the inside edge of the door, and from these the door hangs (Fig. 25b). There are no rollers at the door bottom, but there is a metal strip that hooks over a guide fastened to the cupboard floor (Fig. 25c). This guide does not need to extend across the door opening and therefore can remain invisible in use.

A similar device is used for closet doors, generally with double rollers, one in line with the other. In some instances, where the door is thick enough, you can cut a groove in its bottom edge instead of attaching a guide strip to the side (Fig. 25d).

Sliding doors of the above type are not usually made to go around corners. Instead you can buy flexible rolling doors made of interlocking strips of either plastic or aluminum. These doors come with wood-grain finishes, and they're very easy to install. They enable you to close cabinets that have curved or rounded fronts. The views in Fig. 26 show both the construction and application. All these doors need is a track cut into or formed on the wood base and top, or sides, of the cabinet, and well waxed with paraffin. This type of door can be used for living-room built-ins (standing wall cabinets, etc.) large or small. They are ideal where there is no room for swinging or rigid sliding doors.