I am considering replacing the door to my basement garage door (boat door as some refer to it) with a sliding barn type door. I am interested in constructions details, best practices for creating a good seal, hardware recommendations, etc…
Exterior wall is brick veneer.
Anyone done this and wish they hadn’t. Specific pitfalls I need to be aware of?
Replies
Never done one - just an observation here. I would consider this to be somewhat obscure hardware, but my local Lowe's store stocks the track and rollers, all the sliding door hardware. I can't believe they sell many units here in South Georgia, but there it is.
Check your local store. I like to see something for myself, first hand.
Greg
They sell the hardware at the stores close to Atlanta as well. Not sure it's the best hardware for the application though. I would also love to see some good install pictures.This is the perfect solution for my application but only if it can be made to work well and seal well, or at least as well as a typical garage door.
Several years ago FHB published a house that had one wall of the living room that swing away on barn door hardware. In was sealed on all four sides with gaskets - something that would be a bit harder with a garage door on a slab.
I've used garage door hardware on shops but never with the intention on making them particularly weather tight. Ideally the track would have a kink in it that brought the door in tight as it reached its closed position - much like the mechanism on a mini-vans side door, or perhaps rollers to keep the door angled out once open so that the gasket didn't rub along the wall and door jambs.
It seems like that could be accomplished fairly easily by angling the track, i.e. spacing the open end of the track farther away from the wall. Sealing the bottom of the door is probably the hardest part although angling the track upward slightly may be enough to accomplish that if I can find a seal that will work.I can envision some cam type mechanisms that would work but it adds a level of complexity that I don't really want to get into. Simple and reliable is the goal.
have you seen this?
http://www.barndoorhardware.com/
I did. There is some nice stuff there. I haven't found any good details of jambs and such though. Shouldn't be that hard to design something but there isn't much sense in reinventing the wheel either.
I was in Costco today and noticed that they use sliding doors for access to their bulk freezers. They had built up a 2" deep surround clad in smooth steel onto which the fully gasketted door fit very tightly - and it was on a slab. The hardware was heavy duty but quite similar to all the other barn door tracks I have seen. A handle similar to that found on all commercial freezers pulled everything tight. Sorry I couldn't see any label to identify the manufacturer. Do you have a Costco card?
No, no cosco here that I am aware of. I may check one out when I visit my folks in Mass.
try this
seems there's a new one (or at least one I hadn't known about) not too far off your daily route.
membership has def paid off buying diapers and formula there.
I drive that way every day and I think that is just a warehouse, not a retail location.
I shoulda went with their site: http://www.costco.com/Warehouse/locator.aspx
I have done 2 or 3 over the years. A good seal will be a real challenge/problem. They are not made/designed to seal. That is the reason they are not used much these days. The operation is very loosey goosey.