How to Build and Install a Sliding Door

We’ve had lots of fun sharing and building our tiny barn doors over the last few months, but have really wanted to try our hand at building and installing a full-size door.

I’ve (Vicki) been wanting to replace the door to my laundry room because it opens into the room making the space feel and function smaller than it really is. I thought a sliding door would free up the space. Thanks to CrownBolt, who sells products exclusively in Home Depot under the Everbilt label, we were able to finally get this project underway. 

Laundry Room Door Before

Everbilt Sliding Door Hardware

Because we did not want to remove all the existing door frame molding we had to have a door wider and taller than any available locally so we had to create one from scratch. Also, the sliding door hangers are designed to fit either a 1 3/8” or 1 3/4” thick door so it would have to be designed with those thickness in mind.

Anyone who has ever purchased lumber has found that the common names for boards like 1x2 are not actual sizes of the boards. We measured everything manually to determine we were actually creating a door with the required thickness. Our measurements were spot on so the door hangers fit perfectly!

Materials:

• Everbilt Sliding Door Hardware (Home Depot)
• Plywood (Home Depot)
• Marker board (Home Depot)
• 1x3 Red Oak (Home Depot)
• 1x4 Poplar (Home Depot)
• Door Handle (Ikea)
• JB Weld (Amazon)
• ​Construction Adhesive (Home Depot)
• DAP Rapid Fuse (Amazon)
• Kilz Primer and Sealer (Home Depot)

Tools:

• Drill/bits
• Table Saw
• Kreg jig (Amazon)
• Kreg face clamp (Amazon)
• Sander

We started by drawing out a plan of what the door would look like. The main structure of the door is a piece of plywood—to achieve the thickness needed for the hangers, we bought 1x3 lumber to make a frame.

We’re going to paint the plywood back blue for a pop of color and the 1x3 frame white.

The front of the door will have slats of marker board to give it a shiplap look.

Then we will add the sliding door hangers and a handle.

First we gave the plywood front, back and sides a good sanding.

Then we painted the front, back and sides with Kilz primer and sealer.

Next the instructions show that the door needs to have a groove at the bottom for the floor guide to pass through . We decided we could easily do this with a table saw. We did a couple practice tries as this was our very first time using a table saw, but it worked out great. We made one small cut then we moved the table saw guide slightly and did another pass to create the width we needed.

To join the boards together, we used a Kreg jig. A Kreg jig makes pocket holes which makes it easy to screw boards together. After we made all our pocket holes, we put the 1x3 boards in place and screwed them together.

After all four boards were connected, we flipped over our frame so the pocket holes didn’t show.

Then we clamped the frame to the plywood and used wood screws to attach.

We headed back to the table saw to rip the marker board down into 6” slats. It was very helpful to do this as a team and communication and safety are key.

Next we sanded the edges of each slat to give it a little distressed look.

Then we laid all the slats on top of the plywood. We used a caulking gun with heavy duty adhesive.

After it dried, we took the door inside and measured and marked the placement for the hanger holes. We pushed the hex bolts through the holes from the back, put the hanger in place and attached the remaining hardware.

By reading the instructions, we found that if the rail did not line up to the wall studs, we needed to install a header board on which we would attach the rail.

We got the placement of the header board and marked the studs. We predrilled the screw holes into the header board.

We finished attaching our header board and then marked and drilled our pilot holes for the rail. Using a ratcheting wrench we screwed the rail into place.

We put the door in place and attached the door stops to each end of the rail.

We placed the anti-jump disks to the top of the door.

Now we head to the bottom of the door to install the door guide. Mom did not want to drill into her tile floor so we decided to use J-B Weld which is a quick setting epoxy that works on tile. We opened the J-B Weld, squeezed some into a container and mixed the epoxy together, we spread it on the floor guide and put it into place.

We added the handle and done!

The whole front is a dry erase board!

Back of the door from inside laundry room

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The door has been in use for a few days now. The removal of the inward swinging door has made such a difference in the functionality of the space! There is space to move around with the bonus of letting more light into the dark hallway when the door is in the open position. It was well worth the effort and set backs to build and install this door! 

Please note: We are not sponsored by any of the companies/products that we used. We were given the sliding door hardware to try out from CrownBolt. All thoughts and options are our own and based on our experience with the product.​

FYI: We are not professionals, and we don’t claim to be. This is what we found worked for our project. Yours may need a little different approach. Safety first!

FYI: Affiliate links are being used on this page. Purchasing via these links help support MDP!

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