The Art of Building a Sliding Door System: A DIY Guide

Building a sliding door system can be a complex project, but with the right tools and materials, it can also be a rewarding experience. In this article, we will guide you through the process of building a sliding door system using tongue-and-groove flooring.

I started by lining up one piece of flooring to the outer edge and then pushed on all of the tongue-and-groove pieces to line them up before adding a lot of Brad's to hold them in place. I flipped them over and then set the guide on my circular saw to trim off the excess of the flooring that was hanging off one edge. Measuring the final size of these pieces, so that I could make a frame to go around the outside. I wanted this to be a mitered frame, so I took some flooring boards and cut 45-degree angles on them in the right direction on the table saw.

I ripped these down to a width match the thickness of my doors, then I just laid them out matching up all of the miters on the corners trimming them where I needed to and then adding lots of Brad's to hold these together. With both doors done, I needed to add the hardware but I wanted to sand where the hardware was gonna go so that I didn't have to sand around the hardware later. I did a light sanding on the doors and then laid out where I wanted the hardware rollers to be mark the holes and drilled them through just like I did with the track. Unfortunately, the bolts that came with this were also too long so I had to use silver screws.

We're gonna have to go back and hand paint these just to match the black later. The instructions that come with this kit are really really easy to follow and the results turned out to be really nice. I'm very happy with how the sliding doors worked out. The last thing to add here is a tabletop and I'm going to do this in the simplest way possible because I don't have a lot of time or space for this project.

Basically, I'm going to lay out some two by sixes and pocket screw them from the backside to make a panel in the long run. There is potential for this to warp and bow a little bit to change shape although it's probably not a huge concern but I did want to point it out because if you need a more stable tabletop then using bread boards on the end might be a better way to do it. But for this case in this particular piece, I think it's going to work just fine.

It's surprisingly tough to get a really nice straight two by six at one of the big-box stores it took me a while to find these four and they're not even perfect. I flipped them around trying to hide the knots and get the best face forward and then laid them out and add a glue in between two of them before putting pocket screws in to drive them together. Clamps are really important here to make sure that all the faces connect that you want to connect.

Ultimately, this is not going to be a perfectly flat top you could certainly plane it down or come up with a different joinery method if that's super important to you. Once I got all the pocket screws in, I used a straight edge on one end to trim it down to the right length again. The circular saw worked great here even though it does leave kind of a rough edge. I sanded both sides and the ends with 120 grit paper to get it ready for stain.

Finally, I added a corner bracket to each one of the four corners flush with the top edge. They can permanently attach the top once they get it in its final location but for now they can lift it off so it's easier to move and drop the doors on. And that's it! It turned out pretty good there it is, it's really big and really heavy but I'm also really happy with how it turned out.

If you want to make one of these, don't have to go with the rustic look, you can actually face this in any material that you want. It doesn't have to be reclaimed flooring or reclaimed wood of any kind in fact you could just leave it plywood and stain it to your liking and like I said before the top could be made in a bunch of different ways out of a bunch of different materials so you have a lot of options there as well.

There are a lot of consoles like this out there, a lot of people have made videos on them and have plans for them but if you like mine, I am gonna have plans for this available on my site. They will be linked in the description if you want to go check them out. I hope you'll like this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next time

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today I'm gonna make a Media Console with sliding doors some good friends of mine got married not too long ago and they're moving into their first home together they asked me to build them a Media Console to hide all of their media stuff in the center and put their TV on the wall above it they also gave me a bunch of reclaimed pine flooring that they took out of a building on their farm so I made them a Media Console using that flooring to give it a rustic look let me show you how I did it the first step in making this whole project was to put a base underneath it to lift the bottom shelf off the ground to do that I made a simple 2x4 frame I'll cut down a long side for the front and the back and then cut several pieces to go in between them to make up the cross braces and for those I cut one and then used it as a guide to cut all of the other ones so that all five of them were exactly the same length then I just had to screw the frame together and this is really simple I split the long boards into four equal parts I pre-drilled and drove in some screws from the outside of both of these pieces and then tighten those screws into the end of the short two by fours in-between to stop this whole piece from rocking back and forth you want to make sure that you two by fours are as straight as possible and you get all of the pieces set flush against each other when you screw them together due to the size of my shop and the placement of my table saw I can't push a full sheet of plywood through the table saw so I use this guide on my circular saw and it's great for cutting down large sheets into useable pieces I broke this one down so that I had one large piece to put on top of my base and four other pieces to use for the uprights of the cabinets I didn't get the cleanest cuts in the world so I used a little sandpaper just to smooth off all of the cut edges of the plywood in my trim router I put a 3/4 inch bit so that I could cut some dedos to accept these uprights I measured the base of the router so that I could set up an offset on the edge where I wanted to cut I did this by putting on a four foot level and clamping it down this gave me a straight edge to cut along with the router I did this for all of the different slots but be warned if you try to cut a 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch slot with one pass it's kind of hard to do and you can end up burning the wood so you can do a couple of different ways you can make shallow passes and go over at several times which I tried or on the edges you can actually only cut partially into the end of the wood and then come back and make a second pass to get the full cut I added some glue to the dedos and then used a corner clamp to hold the end pieces at 90 degrees while I flipped this whole thing on its side and then pre-drilled and screw it in from the bottom edge the ones on the end need that clamp to hold them at 90 degrees but the ones in the center just slide right into the dedos and with some glues and screws they hold right in place next I had to put in some pieces across the top to hold these away from each other and in the right position I did this just by cutting down some simple scrap of whatever I had laying around and then adding pocket holes pocket holes are really common when you're making cabinetry they're easy to hide and they're plenty strong for the use here I held the first one in place just trying to keep it flush on the outside while I drove the screws in and then realized that adding a clamp would definitely keep it in place to keep it flush while I screwed it in unfortunately this didn't work with the center one because there was nowhere to clamp it to so I just did my best next it was time to add it to my base frame and instead of screwing it down I just added some construction adhesive this thing was plenty heavy enough to hold it in place but there was a little bit of spring in some of the plywood so I added some clamps just to clamp it all the way down and make sure it was flat like I mentioned before my friend gave me a bunch of old pine flooring to use for this project it was rough sawn on one side and the other side was covered with several layers of paint I decided to go for the rough sawn look since it was just more consistent across all the different boards I cut down four pieces to fit across the end of each one of these sides and since this was tongue and groove flooring it was actually really easy to knock in together and get it straight all of the tongues went right into the groove just as if you were laying it on the floor and then I used some Brad nails to hold it on I didn't glue these on in case they ever wanted to pull this off and reface the outside with something lighter or thinner or maybe just entirely different on some of the pieces I cut off the tongue and the groove to get a more finished edge so that I could make a face frame for the front of the entire cabinet I used thin strips for the uprights but thicker strips for all the horizontal pieces on the bottom I just matched the thickness of the frame and the plywood and on the top I left them kind of long to hold the hardware that'll go on for the doors I held these on with Brad's as well and drove in a couple of screws from the backside just to reinforce them for each shelf I cut down two strips of half-inch plywood to make a cleat for the shelf to sit on I also cut down a 10 inch piece of plywood to use as a spacer I set that on the bottom of the shelf and then glued and nailed in a strip and then use that to set the spacer on again to on the second string this forces all of the strips to be the same distance from the one below them which will eventually make all of the shelves even I broke down the rest of the plywood using the circular saw into the different sizes I needed for the shelves each one of these got put onto the cleats with some glue and Brad's this entire piece was getting really heavy already and I didn't want to add a full sheet of 3/4 inch plywood to the back so I used some eighth inch plywood instead I cut it to size and Brad nailed it on to prepare for adding the hanging hardware I sanded down the top section where I would have to put in the track I'll have a link down in the description for the sliding barn door kit that I use for this it was really easy to put together i clamped the two pieces together and used a metal cutting bandsaw to cut them down to length but you could easily use a grinder with a cut-off wheel if that's what you've got i sanded them a little bit smooth and then put some rust preventative on them to make sure that they wouldn't rust I laid the whole piece on its back and then laid the track out measuring where it needed to be from the top edge and making sure that it was lined up on the ends once I had it in place I marked all of the holes so that I knew where to drill I used to punch to start those holes and then drilled a hole all the way through the top face frame the bolts that came with it were too long for what I was doing so I just cut them down with a metal cutting bandsaw again you could use a grinder here and it would work just fine I put the bolts through the rail through the standoff and into the wood I just tightened them down with a wrench and it held in place just fine the kit also came with some in stops which slide right on and tighten into place they also cover up the cut off ends I painted the inside of the entire cabinet with the help of my beautiful wife who actually likes painting and while that was drying I went on to make some doors to hang on the tracks I started with a base of 3/4 inch plywood and then cut down several more pieces of flooring to the right length to match that base I lined one piece up with the outer edge and then pushed on all of the tongue-and-groove pieces to line them up before adding a lot of Brad's to hold them in place I flipped them over and then set the guide on my circular saw to trim off the excess of the flooring that was hanging off one edge I measured the final size of these pieces so that I could make a frame to go around the outside I wanted this to be a mitered frame so I took some flooring boards and cut 45-degree angles on them in the right direction on the table saw I ripped these down to a width match the thickness of my doors then I just laid them out matching up all of the miters on the corners trimming them where I needed to and then adding lots of Brad's to hold these together with both doors done I needed to add the hardware but I wanted to sand where the hardware was gonna go so that I didn't have to sand around the hardware later I did a light sanding on the doors and then laid out where I wanted the hardware rollers to be mark the holes and drilled them through just like I did with the track unfortunately the bolts that came with this were also too long so I had to use silver we're gonna have to go back and hand paint these just to match the black later the instructions that come with this kit are really really easy to follow and the results turned out to be really nice I'm very happy with how the sliding doors worked out the last thing to add here is a tabletop and I'm going to do this in the simplest way possible because I don't have a lot of time or space for this project basically I'm going to lay out some two by sixes and pocket screw them from the backside to make a panel in the long run there is potential for this to warp and bow a little bit to change shape although it's probably not a huge concern but I did want to point it out because if you need a more stable tabletop then using bread boards on the end might be a better way to do it but for this case in this particular piece I think it's going to work just fine it's surprisingly tough to get a really nice straight two by six at one of the big-box stores it took me a while to find these four and they're not even perfect I flipped them around trying to hide the knots and get the best face forward and then laid them out and add a glue in between two of them before putting pocket screws in to drive them together clamps are really important here to make sure that all the faces connect that you want to connect and it's also important to clamp the ends to make sure that the ends stay in position while you're screwing it all together ultimately this is not going to be a perfectly flat top you could certainly plane it down or come up with a different joinery method if that's super important to you once I got all the pocket screws in I used a straight edge on one end to trim it down to the right length again the circular saw worked great here even though it does leave kind of a rough edge i sanded both sides and the ends with 120 grit paper to get it ready for stain and finally I added a corner bracket to each one of the four corners flush with the top edge they can permanently attach the top once they get it in its final location but for now they can lift it off so it's easier to move and drop the doors on and it was finished it turned out pretty good there it is it's really big in really heavy but I'm also really happy with how it turned out now if you wanted to make one of these you don't have to go with the rustic look you can actually face this in any material that you want it doesn't have to be reclaimed flooring or reclaimed wood of any kind in fact you could just leave it plywood and payment or stain it to your liking and like I said before the top could be made in a bunch of different ways out of a bunch of different material so you have a lot of options there as well there are a lot of consoles like this out there a lot of people have made videos on them and have plans for them but if you like mine I am gonna have plans for this available on my site they will be linked in the description if you want to go check them out I hope you'll like this one I've got lots of other types of projects for you to check out and I'm gonna be moving really soon and this is one of the last projects in my current shop be sure to subscribe to the Maine and the second channel to find out more about the move in the new shop that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next timehey I'm Bob and I like to make stuff today I'm gonna make a Media Console with sliding doors some good friends of mine got married not too long ago and they're moving into their first home together they asked me to build them a Media Console to hide all of their media stuff in the center and put their TV on the wall above it they also gave me a bunch of reclaimed pine flooring that they took out of a building on their farm so I made them a Media Console using that flooring to give it a rustic look let me show you how I did it the first step in making this whole project was to put a base underneath it to lift the bottom shelf off the ground to do that I made a simple 2x4 frame I'll cut down a long side for the front and the back and then cut several pieces to go in between them to make up the cross braces and for those I cut one and then used it as a guide to cut all of the other ones so that all five of them were exactly the same length then I just had to screw the frame together and this is really simple I split the long boards into four equal parts I pre-drilled and drove in some screws from the outside of both of these pieces and then tighten those screws into the end of the short two by fours in-between to stop this whole piece from rocking back and forth you want to make sure that you two by fours are as straight as possible and you get all of the pieces set flush against each other when you screw them together due to the size of my shop and the placement of my table saw I can't push a full sheet of plywood through the table saw so I use this guide on my circular saw and it's great for cutting down large sheets into useable pieces I broke this one down so that I had one large piece to put on top of my base and four other pieces to use for the uprights of the cabinets I didn't get the cleanest cuts in the world so I used a little sandpaper just to smooth off all of the cut edges of the plywood in my trim router I put a 3/4 inch bit so that I could cut some dedos to accept these uprights I measured the base of the router so that I could set up an offset on the edge where I wanted to cut I did this by putting on a four foot level and clamping it down this gave me a straight edge to cut along with the router I did this for all of the different slots but be warned if you try to cut a 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch slot with one pass it's kind of hard to do and you can end up burning the wood so you can do a couple of different ways you can make shallow passes and go over at several times which I tried or on the edges you can actually only cut partially into the end of the wood and then come back and make a second pass to get the full cut I added some glue to the dedos and then used a corner clamp to hold the end pieces at 90 degrees while I flipped this whole thing on its side and then pre-drilled and screw it in from the bottom edge the ones on the end need that clamp to hold them at 90 degrees but the ones in the center just slide right into the dedos and with some glues and screws they hold right in place next I had to put in some pieces across the top to hold these away from each other and in the right position I did this just by cutting down some simple scrap of whatever I had laying around and then adding pocket holes pocket holes are really common when you're making cabinetry they're easy to hide and they're plenty strong for the use here I held the first one in place just trying to keep it flush on the outside while I drove the screws in and then realized that adding a clamp would definitely keep it in place to keep it flush while I screwed it in unfortunately this didn't work with the center one because there was nowhere to clamp it to so I just did my best next it was time to add it to my base frame and instead of screwing it down I just added some construction adhesive this thing was plenty heavy enough to hold it in place but there was a little bit of spring in some of the plywood so I added some clamps just to clamp it all the way down and make sure it was flat like I mentioned before my friend gave me a bunch of old pine flooring to use for this project it was rough sawn on one side and the other side was covered with several layers of paint I decided to go for the rough sawn look since it was just more consistent across all the different boards I cut down four pieces to fit across the end of each one of these sides and since this was tongue and groove flooring it was actually really easy to knock in together and get it straight all of the tongues went right into the groove just as if you were laying it on the floor and then I used some Brad nails to hold it on I didn't glue these on in case they ever wanted to pull this off and reface the outside with something lighter or thinner or maybe just entirely different on some of the pieces I cut off the tongue and the groove to get a more finished edge so that I could make a face frame for the front of the entire cabinet I used thin strips for the uprights but thicker strips for all the horizontal pieces on the bottom I just matched the thickness of the frame and the plywood and on the top I left them kind of long to hold the hardware that'll go on for the doors I held these on with Brad's as well and drove in a couple of screws from the backside just to reinforce them for each shelf I cut down two strips of half-inch plywood to make a cleat for the shelf to sit on I also cut down a 10 inch piece of plywood to use as a spacer I set that on the bottom of the shelf and then glued and nailed in a strip and then use that to set the spacer on again to on the second string this forces all of the strips to be the same distance from the one below them which will eventually make all of the shelves even I broke down the rest of the plywood using the circular saw into the different sizes I needed for the shelves each one of these got put onto the cleats with some glue and Brad's this entire piece was getting really heavy already and I didn't want to add a full sheet of 3/4 inch plywood to the back so I used some eighth inch plywood instead I cut it to size and Brad nailed it on to prepare for adding the hanging hardware I sanded down the top section where I would have to put in the track I'll have a link down in the description for the sliding barn door kit that I use for this it was really easy to put together i clamped the two pieces together and used a metal cutting bandsaw to cut them down to length but you could easily use a grinder with a cut-off wheel if that's what you've got i sanded them a little bit smooth and then put some rust preventative on them to make sure that they wouldn't rust I laid the whole piece on its back and then laid the track out measuring where it needed to be from the top edge and making sure that it was lined up on the ends once I had it in place I marked all of the holes so that I knew where to drill I used to punch to start those holes and then drilled a hole all the way through the top face frame the bolts that came with it were too long for what I was doing so I just cut them down with a metal cutting bandsaw again you could use a grinder here and it would work just fine I put the bolts through the rail through the standoff and into the wood I just tightened them down with a wrench and it held in place just fine the kit also came with some in stops which slide right on and tighten into place they also cover up the cut off ends I painted the inside of the entire cabinet with the help of my beautiful wife who actually likes painting and while that was drying I went on to make some doors to hang on the tracks I started with a base of 3/4 inch plywood and then cut down several more pieces of flooring to the right length to match that base I lined one piece up with the outer edge and then pushed on all of the tongue-and-groove pieces to line them up before adding a lot of Brad's to hold them in place I flipped them over and then set the guide on my circular saw to trim off the excess of the flooring that was hanging off one edge I measured the final size of these pieces so that I could make a frame to go around the outside I wanted this to be a mitered frame so I took some flooring boards and cut 45-degree angles on them in the right direction on the table saw I ripped these down to a width match the thickness of my doors then I just laid them out matching up all of the miters on the corners trimming them where I needed to and then adding lots of Brad's to hold these together with both doors done I needed to add the hardware but I wanted to sand where the hardware was gonna go so that I didn't have to sand around the hardware later I did a light sanding on the doors and then laid out where I wanted the hardware rollers to be mark the holes and drilled them through just like I did with the track unfortunately the bolts that came with this were also too long so I had to use silver we're gonna have to go back and hand paint these just to match the black later the instructions that come with this kit are really really easy to follow and the results turned out to be really nice I'm very happy with how the sliding doors worked out the last thing to add here is a tabletop and I'm going to do this in the simplest way possible because I don't have a lot of time or space for this project basically I'm going to lay out some two by sixes and pocket screw them from the backside to make a panel in the long run there is potential for this to warp and bow a little bit to change shape although it's probably not a huge concern but I did want to point it out because if you need a more stable tabletop then using bread boards on the end might be a better way to do it but for this case in this particular piece I think it's going to work just fine it's surprisingly tough to get a really nice straight two by six at one of the big-box stores it took me a while to find these four and they're not even perfect I flipped them around trying to hide the knots and get the best face forward and then laid them out and add a glue in between two of them before putting pocket screws in to drive them together clamps are really important here to make sure that all the faces connect that you want to connect and it's also important to clamp the ends to make sure that the ends stay in position while you're screwing it all together ultimately this is not going to be a perfectly flat top you could certainly plane it down or come up with a different joinery method if that's super important to you once I got all the pocket screws in I used a straight edge on one end to trim it down to the right length again the circular saw worked great here even though it does leave kind of a rough edge i sanded both sides and the ends with 120 grit paper to get it ready for stain and finally I added a corner bracket to each one of the four corners flush with the top edge they can permanently attach the top once they get it in its final location but for now they can lift it off so it's easier to move and drop the doors on and it was finished it turned out pretty good there it is it's really big in really heavy but I'm also really happy with how it turned out now if you wanted to make one of these you don't have to go with the rustic look you can actually face this in any material that you want it doesn't have to be reclaimed flooring or reclaimed wood of any kind in fact you could just leave it plywood and payment or stain it to your liking and like I said before the top could be made in a bunch of different ways out of a bunch of different material so you have a lot of options there as well there are a lot of consoles like this out there a lot of people have made videos on them and have plans for them but if you like mine I am gonna have plans for this available on my site they will be linked in the description if you want to go check them out I hope you'll like this one I've got lots of other types of projects for you to check out and I'm gonna be moving really soon and this is one of the last projects in my current shop be sure to subscribe to the Maine and the second channel to find out more about the move in the new shop that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'll see you next time\n"