bi-fold doors

[pawnhead]

Sorry about that, I presumed it was someone attempting the unknown or untried because they didn't know better, rather than someone whose skill and experience have led them to try something a bit different.

Nothing to be sorry about. It might well be that I should know better.

Mick (who's been known to do things that aren't supposed to be possible)

John (who's trying to do something that's not supposed to be possible).

if he can get them to work, he will become a millionaire the first bi-folds to defy gravity

Another disbeliever.
I don't think there's a million bucks in it but they won't have to defy gravity.

seriously tho, good luck

Thanks, I might need it.
Timber gets here on Monday and I should have the track by Tuesday, so I'll see if it works with the old carriages that I've got. Fingers crossed.

[journeyman Mick]

Pawnhead,
just an idea, before you commit yourself fully (and build your doors to their required sizes) you may want to try this:
Make a mock up of the geometry, a stick of, say 42 x 19 cut to length to represent each door and the whole lot hinged together to mimic the finished product. Set up your "top track" in the form of maybe a couple of sticks of pine to take a bit of dowel that's been fixed to the top of your "doors" so as to mimic the rail and carriages. Then try opening and closing the resultant model. It should only take a hour or so to knock up and may save you a lot of mucking around. If it works, great! If it doesn't, well it'll save you cutting your doors down and rehanging the top track for a start and will save a lot of swearing and frustration. Please let us know how it goes.

Mick

[Sigidi]

Yeah for sure, let us know how it works - unfortunately I'm in the non-believers box, it looks like it will work on paper, but my thoughts are along the lines of it will be frustrating to try and open and close them

Prove me wrong and then post instructions how to do it, 'cause I won't to do the same, but can't figure it out

[pawnhead]

If it doesn't, well it'll save you cutting your doors down and rehanging the top track for a start and will save a lot of swearing and frustration. Please let us know how it goes.

Mick

The doors will be the same dimensions regardless of how I configure them.

Yeah for sure, let us know how it works - unfortunately I'm in the non-believers box, it looks like it will work on paper, but my thoughts are along the lines of it will be frustrating to try and open and close them

Yeh, I agree that they'll probably be frustrating to close from the fully open position, and without the bottom track they won't exactly glide, but I can put up with that if they can be operated with care.

I've done all the gyprocking after taking the sag out of the ceiling and putting a 5mm pre-camber in the head of the opening. Some progress piccys of the renos if anyone is interested. They're pretty boring though
Here's half of the opening from inside. You can see that I'm going to make a casement window on each side of the opening. I've just built the new deck but it's a bit messy from plastering. I made the fake sandstone barbie in the background from sand moulds
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep15205.jpg
I went through three $40 9" diamond blades cutting this sandstone and capping. There's about ten lineal metres of it
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep15214.jpg
The floor was out of level and I want to get it perfect for the doors without putting a patch in the threshold, so I'm lifting the old floor and re-laying it after I've torn up the rotten floor underneath
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep15204.jpg
I've got to build a bulkhead outside here to carry the track which will be mounted outside the opening
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep15207.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep15208.jpg
Looking from the yard. That tree is about an inch away from the gutter and it's a pain in the *rse dropping leaves all over my new laserlite and clogging my gutters. I'm going to have a go at cutting it down, but it's pretty scary up there
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep15216.jpg
The timber arrived last week. It's a bit gnarly and it's not the straightest. :mad: There's up to a 5mm bow in the length of some of the stiles. I'll have to hold them straight until their glazed and hung. I've knocked up my first door but I haven't glued it yet
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep24226.jpg
The M&Ts are a bit rough. I made up a jig for my router to do the mortises and I just used a power saw and a chisel on the tenons http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep24230.jpg
The offcut I ripped from the glazing rebate will make the glazing bead
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep24234.jpg
They stuffed up and sent the wrong track to my supplier so it will be a week before I get the track. I hope it will carry the weight because these doors are going to be heavy. I might wedge them when they're open to take the weight off my sagging Hyspan. Here's one of the old carriages I found. I've just got to cut one end of the mounting plate and weld it at 90 degrees so it goes down the edge of the door. I don't trust just topfixing it
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...e/Sep24232.jpg

John

[Bleedin Thumb]

Better you than me. That floor looks like a nightmare, sagging hyspan ..why do we do it to ourselves.
Anyway you stone wall looks good.
Cheers,

[journeyman Mick]

The doors will be the same dimensions regardless of how I configure them...............

John,
if it doesn't work and you rehang your toptrack to be square in the opening rather than at the slight angle you show, then this will shorten it slightly. Probably just enough that you'll need to trim each door a bit I'm guessing. (I've probably missed something here )

Mick

[pawnhead]

John,
if it doesn't work and you rehang your toptrack to be square in the opening rather than at the slight angle you show, then this will shorten it slightly. Probably just enough that you'll need to trim each door a bit I'm guessing. (I've probably missed something here )

Mick

I'll keep the doors in the same closed position as planned, i.e. outside the opening, overlapping it by 12mm on each side. This gives a nice clean look from the inside. The set reveals return into the doors with no timber reveal and no architraves. There's so much timber with the polished floorboards/decking/pergola and doors that I think it's a bit of overkill putting timber reveals and architraves on. If I have to hang them conventially, I'll just have to move the track in parallel on the bulkhead I'm constructing.

edit Or I could always just chop the gyprock off the reveals which gives me another 12mm on each side of the opening anyway. 10mm gyprock + 2mm ex angle.

[Andy Mac]

Well that was a couple of months ago, so Pawnhead, how's it going with your bifold doors?? Any progress to show us?

Cheers,

[pawnhead]

I’ve bee pretty busy recently and I’d like to have had more time for my doors, but don't worry, I’m still hoping to have them done by Xmas so I can post up some sexy pics for you to drool over.

Whilst you’re waiting you can watch some rednecks power tool drag racing.

[totoblue]

If it doesn't work, you can make them a series of french doors. I'm not sure why these bifolds are all the rage - they just seem to let flies and mosquitoes in. You can at least get concealed fly screens for smaller openings (ones that are concealed when they roll up like garage roll-a-doors)

French doors could be opened up almost as much as bifolds (or is that pentafolds) and they are going to be more robust and not sag.

[pawnhead]

Well I’ve finished the doors, and I was going to wait to post until my sparky to came to hook up my lights, but he’s busy until the end of January so I’ll just post now. I could hook them up myself, but I’ve known him since I was 8yrs old and he’s doing it for a slab of beer so I suppose I can’t complain. I screwed in the outside lights so I could see what they’ll look like anyway. I’ve gone a bit overboard with lots of pics, and some of them are a bit warped and distorted because of my camera, (not because the doors are crooked, even though they are ).
Outside
Outside right
Outside left
Inside
With the sashes at 100mm narrower than the doors, the styles line up perfectly when the doors are open and you can still see out of the window through four panes of 6mm lammy.

Construction Details : -
The window sashes are casement opening, swung on hinges instead of casement stays to save money. There’s a cabin hook to hold it in the fully open, folded back position. The second eyelet in the sash holds the sash in a perpendicular position, and the eyelet in the sill is to store the cabin hook parallel to the grain of timber when not in use. It’s easy to see, and to grab from the inside that way, and it looks neater from the outside. You can see the slots that I’ve cut to accommodate the hooks when closing the window. The drawback is that they may rattle in the wind, but I can always attach a wind chime and pretend I’m listening to a band. The sill is tapered at about 10 degrees for weather, and the bottom of the window is bevelled to fit. There's a drip groove under the sill. The opposite sash has just one setting at about 60 degrees so it allows the awning window behind to open fully. When the awning window is open I can’t fold the doors back against the wall, but I can reach inside the window from outside and wind it closed enough to operate the doors . They are latched by a teardrop handle. There’s no glazing in this sash because I’m still trying to coax it straight before I glaze it. Some of the timber I got was pretty warped and bent but I used the worst doors against the jamb where it would hold them straight with the four hinges, and I tried to pair up opposite bows so the doors would work against each other giving a straight finish. I couldn’t find two straight ones for the middle, so I paired up two with a 5mm outward bow in the middle, and when they’re closed they line up with each other perfectly flush and you wouldn’t realise that they are so bowed.
The door handles are cheap $20 jobs from the local Big W. When you open and clip back the first loose leaf, you can see that I couldn’t be bothered buying a rebate kit and I just used a block of wood behind the latch instead. You can also see that it is held back by a ‘cheap’ 80c eyelet cabin hook, that I prefer to call a ‘minimalist look with concealed fixings’ . No ugly screw plates
In this pic you can see that I had to drill the hole for the lock right through to the back of the glazing rebate, but it will be covered by the glazing bead that I ripped out of the rebate in the first place.
The fixed leaf is held by flushbolts, top and bottom, but if I stand on my tip toes I still can’t quite reach the top one. I might try to source a longer one; otherwise I might just get a long barrel bolt and grind down the handle bolt so it fits concealed in the rebate, the same as a flush bolt. You can notice that I haven’t mortised the flush bolt all the way in to the rebate because I didn’t want to destroy the integrity of the M&T joint, being a narrow rebated style at only 90mm wide, so I bogged up the top of the flushbolt and stuck the weather-strip over it. There’s a rebate in the edge strip of the opening leaf that clears it. From the outside you can notice the edge strip on the opening leaf, and the rebate in the fixed leaf.
In this shot you can’t really see it, but I’ve left as much meat as possible on the latch rebate, to the extent of chipping a narrow slot for the striker plate to slide into rather than grinding down the back of the striker. It all gets covered by the weather strip anyway (ugly but practical). In that shot you’ll also notice that the dummy handle just overlaps the striker plate, and it sits proud of the door by almost 1mm. That’s because I removed the guts of the handle but it still protrudes and I didn’t want to drill a whole in the door for it., so it’s just held by the two through bolts. The gap isn’t really noticeable unless you’re looking for it anyway.

After opening the first leaf on each set, you’ve got a flush bolt at the bottom restraining the next door. You can notice that the flush bolt is 3mm longer than I’d have liked, so I had to nick a bit out of the hinge with a hacksaw. The dogleg is hidden by the weatherseal (as my old man always said. “There’s no problems, only solutions”) The track carriage restrains the top. In the middle of the door, there’s a pocket for a cogged key. To remove the key you press on the head. The mortise in the door is smaller than the head of the key so it won’t fall out. It sits in a groove, and inserts on an angle and drops into place. If I’d had a narrower router bit I could have made the stem a tighter fit.
The key inserts into a 6mm hole in the top and bottom of the same, leaf and engages with a mortised security bolt. It’s supplied with an oval escutcheon plate that I chose not to fit (the hole could pass for a small knot in the door if you weren’t looking for it). I ground the tip of each mortise bolt, and flush bolt, on a rounded splay so it will engage even if the door is not tight against the opening. It draws the door toward the opening as it engages fully. When the doors are closed, there’s no furniture or bolts to see except for the door and window latches, and the edges of the hinges. A nice clean look for mine.

Character limit reached. To be continued.

[pawnhead]

After disengaging the mortise bolts (always anti- clockwise to disengage, if fitted properly), they glide right back flat against the outside wall.
No big stack of doors blocking up the opening and taking up valuable deck space for me . Although you can feel the weight of the doors (I’m glad I haven’t had to lift them since they’ve been glazed), a child could operate them with a pinky finger if they could reach the handle. In fact, if you give the handle a sharp but firm pull for about six inches, then let go, they will glide open or closed all the way, on their own. They’re held up by ‘skyhooks carried by gossamer wings’
But seriously, If you remove the bulkhead eaves, you can see the guts of the matter and what’s holding it all up. There’s two screws in each of the four eaves sheets just to stop them sliding around, and this is the left side and this is the right. At the top you can just make out the edge of the tin where it overlaps the laserlite. You can see the 300 X 65mm Hyspan in the background, installed hard up against the roofing for maximum height, and plaster set across the bottom and part way up the face. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Hyspan has sagged 5mm since being under roof load, but that is to be expected, and is within tolerance for this timber beam. However I thought that I’d better cater for any future sagging once the weight of these hardwood doors are on it, so I planed the ceiling joists straight to a stringline, and I packed each side of the head down 10mm which gives me a 5mm upward precamber in the head, so if it sags another 5mm then the head will be straight. The 5mm taper between head and ceiling isn’t noticeable at all. Attached to the beam you can see the pergola rafters notched into boots to cater for the five degree pitch. Then you can see the lump of 6x3 track support that I dug up out of the garage. Below that I’ve screwed a 20mm packer that can be removed and planed down if the beam sags and I need to adjust the track upwards. Below that the track is screwed through the lot, with twin screws at about 200mm centres. The track is just a piece of lipped channel from Lysaghts. It was 2mm wider than I’d have liked for the carriage that I had, so I belted it closed with a lump hammer. The carriage is a simple set up and I’m sure you could make one from ‘off the shelf’ gear but I found my pair in the garage. Below that you can see a piece of merbau decking, ripped down to 45mm, and screwed through the edge/through the hardiflex, and into the beam forming a timber door head. Below that there is a 20mm rebate to the underside of the head with plaster set ex angle. You can also see the droppers I’ve installed for fixing the eaves.
Looking the other way inside the bulkhead, you can see how I’ve fixed the mini fascia board with pocket screws from behind. It’s just a piece of decking rebated into the 140X45 trimmer 10X20mm, and notched into the underside of the rafters (they’re underspanned anyway and the notch is near the support). You can see the groove I ripped in it for the eaves lining.
With the eaves installed it’s a very clean look. In this shot you can see the rebated groove in the head. The rebate is to accommodate the locking nut on the carriage. You can see the nut in this shot. I cut one end off the mounting plate and took it to a welder to weld at 90 degrees so I could mortise it into the edge of the door, screw it in, bog over it then stain it so it blends into the timber. It gives more strength than just top fixing and it’s hardly noticeable. He wasn’t going to charge me for the two welds but I slipped him a tenner for a couple of beers. At the time I was considering putting an offset on the pivoting point to make it in line with the hinge point. Then the slot in the eaves wouldn’t’ intrude in the timber head. It would be contained entirely in the eaves, but I think it looks trickier with the rebated slot so I’m glad I didn’t. That last shot also shows up the dodgy M&Ts with a bit of bog thrown in. I knocked up a jig for the router to do the mortises, but I just used a home made square and a power saw to do the tenons freehand, and a chisel to round them off by eye. When gluing the doors, I didn’t have a pipe clamp, so I just made up some timber braces with wedges and whacked in spreaders where necessary. I haven’t even got a bench so I just made them up on the floor.
I think that they actually glide more easily without the bottom guide track, but there is a couple of ‘sort of’ disadvantages that I was expecting. Firstly, you can’t swing the loose leaf if the bifold section is in use or it scrapes the deck. I was expecting that but there’s no reason to swing it then anyway so it’s no disadvantage. You just have to clip the door back and use the handle to operate the bifold. Secondly, the doors don’t hang perfectly straight when unrestrained (If they were aluminium they might, and I was considering making them out of aluminium but timber was cheaper). The right hand side rubs against the aluminium angle just before the end of its travel, but that’s not a problem. It slides easily, and it just leaves a small black mark at the bottom of the door. The left hand side has the opposite problem. It hangs proud of the angle and I was considering fittinging a handle to the bottom hinges, but it’s not hard to just pull the door with your fingers on the edge of the sill. Perhaps just a small finger pull on the bottom of the hinge would be the go. Hmmm.

This is the effect that I want to achieve with the stained cypress flooring. Just a shadowline that’s been stained inside the shadow to blend in with the floor. I realise that I should allow something for expansion, so I might put a cork strip in, or if it’s too expensive, a PVC casing bead, stained up should do the trick. I’ve got shadowline around the ceiling giving the effect of a floating ceiling. On the floor it will look like floating walls held up by skyhooks.

That’s about it for the doors, but I’ve got a little bit more to add on the rest of the renos if anyone has bothered to read this far and you’re still awake and interested. I’ll post again a bit later.

[DJ’s Timber]

Fantastic job and a well written description.

A video of you opening and closing the doors would be great I reckon

[pawnhead]

Fantastic job and a well written description.

Thanks for that, but they’re really not all that good compared to the quality work that’s posted here. The joinery is OK, having tested each M&T joint dry before glueing, but the sanding is a bit wavy, having been done by hand with a belt sander. A big table sander would be the go. I didn’t bother using a straight edge to get them perfect.
The lacquer/stain and polyurethane job is a bit rough. I suppose I could have done better if I’d sanded right down with a fine grit, and sanded between coats, but I’m not that fussy, and at least they’re nice and shiny, if not a glassy and mirror like finish that I usually see on these forums.

A video of you opening and closing the doors would be great I reckon

Yeh, I don’t have a video camera, so you’ll just have to take my word that they glide (both opening and closing) effortlessly using just one hand on the door handle. I actually expected them to chatter and jam which is why I left a 40mm gap instead of setting up the track so the doors are tight against each other in the open position. I figured it would put less sideways leverage on the carriage, and they can only stack as close as the protruding door handle allows anyway. I can assure you that they don't chatter or jam up at all, and I probably could have closed up that gap and made the bulkhead a bit narrower if I'd bothered to move the track in at the time.

Here’s a bit more I’ll add about the rest of the works in the area : -
In this shot you can see that the old floor doesn’t even reach the wall. That’s because I installed the new beam outside the old wall to grab a bit more floor space and to save demolishing the old wall until I was ready to install the new doors. The beam sits on a couple of 100X100mm hardwood posts bolted, and fixed with hoop iron down to new brick foundations extending down to rock. I was thinking about just staining the post to match the doors, but I decided to go with gyprock. There's too much timber to look at already.The floor has been laid on top of a rotten old floor, and it’s very spongy, so I decided to rip the whole thing up and re lay it.

The roof was originally a foot lower where the beam is, but I jacked it up with an acrow prop, one rafter at a time, a couple of inches at a time, then booted them to the new beam after I installed it. It gives me more headroom for higher doors (they’re 2.5m high) and the pitch is now on the minimum 5 degrees. This gives me 2.4 headroom under the rafters at the pergola beam, whilst maintaining the same ceiling line from inside to out (I'm going to relocate that stink pipe on the wall in the background. It's a bit of a job, but that ugly vent-pipe is annoying me more and more every day).

In that last shot you'll see that I’ve kept the pergola beam up flush with the top of the rafters for more headroom, and I housed the rafters in 12mm X 2/3 their depth on the inside, and the 600mm overhang is just butted to the beam and screwed from the other side. Using a 3” nail, driven on an angle, I stretched a piece of hoop iron tight along the top of the overhang, extending up the top of the rafter. The overhang is as solid as a rock and carries my weight with no deflection.

Here you can see the guttering set up at the end of the pergola, allowing for the awning window to open fully (the roof has a dogleg at the bottom around the window, which determined the position of the first rafter). At the bottom of the window I've attached a piece of timber with a bit of alcor aluminium (on a fall) inside it. It's sealed at the other end and it directs any water running down the window onto the garden bed instead of dripping on the deck. I'm going to scrape back and stain that window eventually. In the background you can see the down pipe going on an angle. I’ve stained it from this side to match the timber, and from the other side I covered it with a dummy post and ‘brace’ that can be lifted off after undoing a screw at the top, so I can replace the down pipe if I ever need to (I'll have to glue a couple of bolt heads to the beam to make the 'post' look more authentic ). The beam isn’t carried by this dummy post. I stripped the cladding, installed a stud inside the wall and extended the beam into the wall sitting on the stud, then replaced the cladding again.

My fish pond/water feature/waterfall/creek is going here behind the retaining wall I built out of bush rock. I hand mixed about a half a cube of concrete and after forming up and throwing an old aluminum handrail in for reinforcement, I poured it behind the dry jointed wall, then I cut the capping and bedded it down on top. I used almost three cheap 9” diamond blades but it was still half the price of buying sawn capping. Three of them are made of cement with a bit of oxide and you can’t really notice it unless you look closely for them. To the right you can see the two steps leading up to the garden, and I scored some sandstone treads off a landscaper mate for a slab of beer. Unfortunately, at just a metre, they’re a bit short for the width I’ve got being 1200, but I’ve got three slabs so I’ll join the top in the middle, and put a 600mm piece in the middle of the bottom with 300mm pieces either side. It should look alright with a pencil round on the stone.

My Barbie is looking better after I mucked around with a bit of oxide painting striations in my ‘faux sandstone’. As soon as I find a feather I’ll muck around and try to get finer striations for a more authentic look. It doesn’t hose out, but I suppose it may fade with time. I accidentaly left a piece of hardwood on the top, and you can see the stain next to my pipe. I suppose it gives it that 'old worn' look, so I'm not too peed off with myself. The sandstone tiles are made of orange brickies sand and off white cement, and they're only 10mm thick at the edges. They were a nice light orange colour originally but they've faded a bit. I made a vee shaped mould for the corner blocks, and packed the mould with brickie’s sand, pressed in with a stone to get the rough bull profile. I reinforced the corner blocks with chicken wire. I intend to make more, and clad the brick foundations out the front of the house with my ‘faux sandstone’ up to floor level. There will be a gas barbie in the middle with a thick slab of timber on either side as a bench top level with the cook top. Probably just some sleepers screwed together, dressed and stained to match all the rest of the pine, overhanging in line with the bull on the ‘stone’.

One last thing I’ll show off is my sexy flowerbox. And here’s me (the reflection in the doors taking a picture).

edit : - I'm interested in how much the doors cost me all up, so I'll write up an account soon and post it up.

[Bleedin Thumb]

Great job John,
That should silence the doubting Thomases!