doorskitchens
I have a brand new home, and in the kitchen is a bi folding door on a track for pantry. I am looking to convert it to one of those frosted doors. Can I just put this on hinges to the wall? Or do i need to get it as a pre hung door and install it with a door jamb, and remove the drywall around it etc? Having trouble finding information as a DIYer for this.
Currently there is no trim around bi folding doors. Just the painted dry wall with notches cut out at floor baseboard and trim.
I'm going to take a stab at this one, though I've never tried this for something large like a door frame.
Go get some self-adhesive fiberglass drywall tape and cover the area to be blended. Mud the seam, sand and repeat until smooth and the surface is blended with the wall. Prime and paint to match.
Alternatively, you could try peeling the paper off some scrap drywall and gluing it to the wall, and then doing the same as above with drywall compound.
I think these will help prevent it from cracking. You'll want to make sure the door frame is well secured to minimize any "give" that would crack it.
Before you get started carefully evaluate if you really really want to have a pair of doors that swing out 18" into the room. In many bedrooms this is likely to be a less than desirable thing to have. If you are having a hard time visualizing what this would be like then you should get some large cardboard boxes and make up a fake set of the doors and duct tape them in place for a few days. Then with normal usage of the room you can swing the fake doors open and shut to see if the 18" interference is a pain or not.
Do not try to install the door hardware right on the top of the drywall. You will indeed regret doing that sooner as opposed to later.
The really correct way to do this is to remove the banding drywall material. (This will likely be more work than first guess because there is highly likely to be metal corner pieces installed on each corner of the opening). You would also remove the banding drywall at the upper side of the opening along with any previous door track hardware. Then you would fit in new boards to make a proper jamb for the doors. These will want to 3/4" thickness and not the 0.5" thickness that you proposed. Proper door fitting will demand that there be a small gap between the jamb and the exposed stud faces. The gap is used to allow the adjustment of the jamb opening so that it is perfectly square and plumb. Tapered wood wedges in the opening help to wedge the frame one way or another.
After the jamb is in place the trim is installed across the gap to bridge over the space from the jamb out over the drywall.
You should also plan for installing door stop molding which gives an edge for the doors to close against.
Door Comparison
I've added a couple of pictures to my answer to show the advantage of bi-fold doors in terms of how they project out into the room less than full swing doors. First off you would want to use a pair of bi-fold doors per opening for optimum usage. The second point is that the pivot point for bi-fold doors can often be recesed into the opening which lessens the projection distance into the room. The latter comment would also apply to a single bi-fold door application as well.
I can appreciate the fact that bi-fold doors use up some of the opening width. For your most often used closets you may want to consider the possibility to widen the opening which of course is not a trivial project. But then what is the price of convenience.
Also closets with deep blind ends are indeed a pain to make use of. Often it can be advantageous to re-fit the closet pole in such closets so that they go across from the front to back of the space at the ends so it is easier to take hung garments in and out.
Best Answer
I understand what you mean. your bi-fold door does not have door jamb because it does not need one. You can not just mount a door on hinges to the wall, you need a jamb, pre hung door or build a jamb.
The issue you need to deal with is the size of the opening. The size of the pre hung door you want to put in the opening is dependent on the size of the opening. Measure your opening ( this is your "rough opening' I.E. RO ) and get a door with an RO the next size smaller, you can go larger but it requires removing framing instead of adding framing. You NEED an RO that is specific to the door you buy, if you are lucky your RO will not need to be modified but is is unlikely.
The thickness of your Sheetrock on the inside of you current opening is likely 1/2 inch on both sides so if you cut it out you gain an inch. If you have to make it smaller you can put in a 2x4 and shim it so that it gives you the RO you need but this means patching in Sheetrock if the amount you ad is wider than the trim you want to use. So measure your opening and determine what the best door size is, i would say one size smaller, and then get back to us. You can do it if you are handy. If you are in Alaska i can help Or fly me there. :)
The bottom line is you need a RO that is the correct size for the required RO of the door you buy, then you need to hang the door correctly and trim it out.