Pax Sandwich Door

Materials: 2 Pax Doors, Hinges, Hard Foam Insulation, Door Handle, Nuts & Bolts

Description: I love Pax doors. They are cool, sleek and inexpensive. I picked up these Pax doors on clearance at my local Ikea. I wanted to make them into a swinging door for my utility closet in my hallway. I decided to bolt two Pax doors together to make a clean front and back for the door since Pax doors expose much of the hardware that keeps them together on the back side. You typically don't see this when they are used as sliding doors.

My girlfriend had the brilliant idea of filling the void between the doors and painting the letters. More on that later.

To bolt the doors together I clamped the two doors together and then drilled a series of holes in each corner. There is a steel L plate inside each corner of the doors that keeps the doors square. It took some time to drill all these holes through the plates. I then took the doors apart. The door frames are hollow so I cut a piece of wood down so that it would just slip inside the frame. The wood was cut almost the whole length of the side that would have the hinges so that the screws for the hinges would have something to bit into.

I then reassembled the doors, lined up the holes and passed bolts through all the holes I had drilled and placed a nut on the back side. I now had made two Pax doors into one.




Since the doors had translucent plastic making up most of the door this is when my girlfriend came up with the filler idea. Since this was to be a closet door we chose MISC on the outside and ETC on the inside.

We used rigid wall foam insulation because it was easy to cut, light weight and inexpensive. We took the doors apart, measured and cut the foam panels to size, painted them white and then we used a projector connected to a computer to project the words onto the panels. We used MS Publisher to create the words but you could use any word processor. She traced the letters in pencil onto the panels and then we painted them black.

We assembled the doors for the final time with the panels in, installed the hinges (hinges that don't need to be recessed into the door), door handle, screen door clasp to keep the door closed and then hung the door following typical procedures for hanging a door.

Pax doors are not standard height for most door openings so the doors ended up being 3 inches short from the floor. To fix this I cut a piece of wood the same dimensions as the door and approx 3 inches tall. I then bolted the wood at the bottom of the door. I got some aluminum panel that was very close to the same color of the door, cut the aluminum into pieces that would cover the wood and then glued the pieces on using contact cement much the same way when you attach Formica to a counter top.

So there you have it. It took a weekend to complete the door and about 2 hours to hang the door. Total cost was approx $250 since we got the doors on clearance.

This door was actually part of a larger remodel project for the hall way. You can see in the final picture we have this door, some more Pax doors of the same design hung to slide and close off the laundry room and we also have frosted Ikea kitchen cabinet doors used for a corner cubbie. We also hung Besta glass panels on one wall to showcase artwork. The cable lights are also hacked Ikea lights. I will post the hacks on those projects as well.

~ Asad, Orlando Florida