Floor to ceiling doors - how to?

[Anotherlevel]

Hi,

I'm planning on some built in cabinetry along the side of our hallway. We have a nice long run of wall (around 10 metres in total) that I'll be using for a combination of bookcases, cabinets and drawers for storage.

At the start of the run there is our fuse board and then a little way further our boiler. I think it would make sense to just build a cabinet around them - floor to ceiling - and then use the additional storage space inside for the vacuum cleaner and a couple of other 'cupboard under the stairs' type items - bulky but easily moved if access needed to the consumer unit or meter.

To make it easier to move things in and out my wife would like the doors to fully reach the floor with no toe kick / base - essentially, just to box in around the unit. So each cabinet would be around 700-800mm wide, and around 2300 tall. I think for that width it would need to be a double door unit?

I haven't come across any examples of this being done. Is this particularly difficult? We have an engineered wood floor that is very flat (don't worry, I checked!) and so whilst I'll be sure to leave around 5-10mm clearance at the bottom I don't think that catching on the floor will be an issue.

My one concern is that without a bottom lip there will be nothing for the door to bear against at the bottom when it closes. I could put a central strut floor to ceiling but that would seem to defeat the whole point of a big cabinet - would make it a tight squeeze if an electrician needed access in the future or the boiler needed replacing.

 

[Sachakins]

You could have one door with top and bottom slide bolts and the other with mag catches holding it against the bolted one.

 

[RobinBHM]

Slave door would need a shoot bolt and a stop of some sort for the master door to close against.

 

[Bingy man]

Or what about something like this and as @Sachakins says then fix 1 door with small bolts and let the other close against the rebate using a cupboard latch to secure the 2nd door . Edited as missed a photo of latch

 

[Ollie78]

I think I would get some nice powerfull rare earth magnets.
Drill a hole and sink one into the top and bottom of the doors near and the oposite ones in the floor and ceiling.
If one set is not holding the door then you could add another magnet as required. Or perhaps add a pair in the faces of the doors where they meet.

Ollie

 

[Alistairmckinnon1961]

Why not build as per a kitchen unit - with a 20mm raised floor (flat horizontal panel covering the whole floor) inside the units for the doors to close against at the bottom ?

 

[Jester129]

How about some shoe storage as well?

 

[SimpleSimon69]

How about a 'Bi-fold' door running in channels? With a bit of careful thought you could place a rod operated latch in the 'middle' of the two doors (you could get it to seat into the channels when closed) which will add support to the centre of the closed doors.

 

[jetsetwilly]

When we did this in an old house we used two standard interior doors (nice and flat and rigid) and just put a batten at the top and a short stop at the bottom to close against, and used magnetic catches.

 

[peter-harrison]

A simple way would be to use shutter bars. They would hold the doors in line with no need for top and bottom stops.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I assume that there will be shelves in the unit some way up from the floor. If the doors are fairly rigid they could bear against this. Just looking at our double doors connecting lounge to kitchen diner - they only bear against the top and one side - the laminate floor runs straight through.

If the shelves needed to be removable to get access to meters etc, I am sure this could be included in the plan.

 

[Doug71]

Old thread I know but thought I would post this solution that I saw on a boiler cupboard today, not my work just in a house I'm working at.

No stops on the floor just magnets in the edge of the doors towards the bottom, seemed to work well.