How-to: Change Pax sliding door to hinge door

Materials: 75 cm PAX WARDROBE frame in white + 1 hinge door 50cm. with mirror / PAX VIKEDAL + 1 hinge door 50cm. plain white/ PAX BALLSTAD + 2 sets of 4 hinges with door dampers / KOMPL + Rubber hammer, electric saw, aluminum edge

Description: I can finally say that after 2 years of brainstorming with myself, reading forums all over the world, asking and not getting answers I figured out how to put a hinge door on a PAX 75 cm. wardrobe frame. All done at home with standard tools that any house have and one visit to the local hardware shop.

As you know PAX 75 cm. wardrobe frames are intended only for sliding doors and there are no hinge doors available for them. I needed a hinged door frame because 1: I had no space for anything but PAX 75 cm. frame 2: sliding doors are much more expensive, and 3: sliding doors come only in pairs and I wanted to put a door only to 1 frame of 75 cm.

It was much easier than I thought. Now I am furious that I did not try that hack earlier.

We assembled everything as per instructions just we left the white door the last. After the first door is fixed we measure the open front space left (around 25cm.) and mark top and bottom where we are going to cut the white door vertically. Cutting can be done at home with standard electric saw or anywhere where cutting services are offered as local hardware stores etc.

At the beginning we were thinking to cover the cut edge with veneer furniture edges but the material the door was made of is little loose and when you press to fix the glue of the veneer edge you damage the cut edge and it is not possible to leave it open any more. That is why we needed to cover it with something but still keep the elegant look of the wardrobe.

Eventually we decided to put an aluminum edges to cover it. The ones we used is 19 mm. external dimensions and 16 mm internal as thick as the chipboard is. We only found it in 2m and 1 m. lengths so we needed to cut one of them and put them together- they do look good though. We do not even needed to put any glue or silicon to fix the aluminum to the door as it goes over it very tightly and nicely -few rubber hammer hits later we were ready with the cutting/covering the cut process.

All there was left was to put the normal IKEA hinges and fix the door as per instructions. Here are pictures of the finished product that I'm sooooo very proud of. I feel like Columbus, discovering new world ... but in a smaller scale of course:)

~ Veselina Bekiarova, Sofia, Bulgaria