Bathroom and toilet doors: varieties, choice

With the choice of interior doors to the apartment usually no difficulty, but when it comes to the doors to the bathroom and toilet, here it is necessary to take into account a number of features. Of course, for the bathroom, you can pick up and standard interior doors, but in the process of operation they may fall into disrepair.

The bathroom is characterized by high humidity, in connection with which it is necessary to choose a door leaf made of materials that are not afraid of either dampness or hot steam. In addition, doors for the bathroom and toilet should have the ability to keep heat inside the room and excellent soundproofing.

Before you go shopping in the hope of finding suitable doors for the bathroom and toilet, you should take into account the fact that it is not recommended to stop your choice on doors that are finished with natural veneer: this material is very susceptible to moisture and temperature changes and can decrease or increase in size.

If you choose doors finished with natural veneer, for bathroom get only those coated with special moisture-proof varnish.

It is also best to choose doors that come with a frame, it guarantees their normal closing and opening. And if you install a special box made of metal, the sliding doors in general will be hidden in part of the wall between the openings, thus saving space.

In many apartments, doors to the toilet and bathroom have a standard width - 60 cm. But this should not become a kind of axiom, so Before buying new doors it is necessary to make a measurement of the opening. Never do this by eye, and if you have installed doors, you need to take them off along with the casings, so as not to make a mistake in the calculations.

The height of the opening is measured from the floor to the overlap of the opening. The width of the opening is measured from wall to wall. The depth (thickness) of the opening must be measured taking into account the fact that there must be a reserve for the thickness of the tiles (tiles) and facing the wall of the room.

In stores you can see door leaves of the following sizes:

• 550x1900 mm (suitable for an opening with a width of 59 to 65 cm and an opening height of 195 to 200 cm);
• 600x1900 mm (suitable for 64-70 cm wide and 195-200 cm high openings)
• 600x2000 mm (suitable for 64-70 cm wide and 205 to 210 cm high openings).

To date, bathroom doors are made of different materials, and in order to choose the best option for you, you need to familiarize yourself with the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

Glass is probably the most successful material for bathroom doors regarding its resistance to moisture.

Their advantages:

• glass is not threatened by distortion or physical damage resulting from high temperatures and water;
• Glass is environmentally friendly, perfectly preserves heat, is hygienic and is characterized by excellent soundproofing;
• Modern doors for the bathroom are made of glass, which is highly durable, so it is almost unrealistic to break it;
• The range of glass doors in stores is very diverse - you can find doors with a relief coating, and with a frosted, and even mirror options with different transparency parameters. Usually the most interesting door models are made from this material;
• constructions made of glass seem to be weightless, so that the room becomes brighter and visually increases.

Disadvantages Doors made of glass do not have too many disadvantages - it is just their high cost.

Doors from one collection look spectacular with door leafs made of different materials. For example, combination of opposites - glass doors in the rooms and wooden doors - in the toilet and bathroom - looks stylish.

Wood is a material considered a classic for the bathroom, but perhaps everyone knows that it should not come into contact with water, so as not to come into disrepair before time.

Its virtues include:

• the ability to make a cozy and noble design of the room;
• thanks to the use of antiseptic and lacquer coating, modern wooden doors are quite resistant to moisture;
• doors are made of top quality raw materials (usually oak or beech).

Disadvantages Wooden doors are considered to be expensive and, as mentioned above, have a low shelf life because of constant evaporation and humidity, so for installation in the bathroom it is necessary to treat them with antiseptic and varnish coating.

Their advantages include:

• inexpensive price;
• resistance to the action of humid air.

Among the disadvantages of such doors can be noted:

• particleboard contains formaldehyde resins, substances that are released into the environment and can cause an allergic reaction in humans;
• MDF is flammable in contact with open flame. Also, the material is subject to mechanical damage.

One of the most practical, durable and sustainable options for the bathroom will be doors made of laminate.

Laminate is a man-made material, identical in construction to veneer. In appearance, it resembles natural wood and gives the doors a luxurious and aesthetic look.

The advantage of is that, unlike wooden doors, laminated doors are easy to clean and much more resistant to external influences. They are not afraid of moisture and can serve for a long time in conditions of high humidity, temperature fluctuations and other negative phenomena.

Laminated doors due to low cost belong to the economy class, but at the same time have an attractive appearance and will last for years, pleasing their owners.

A significant disadvantage is the presence of formaldehyde, which negatively affects human health.

For apartments and houses with limited space, bathroom sliding doors are perfect. Thanks to the sliding mechanism, they will fit perfectly in any dwelling, without requiring additional space to open.

Among owners of small homes, compartment doors are the most popular. Having decided on the design, it is necessary to choose the material of which they will be made. This can be glass, plastic, laminate, veneer and other materials.

Plastic is a material that is perfectly suitable for damp rooms.

The advantages of such doors:

• polyvinyl chloride is not afraid of the influence of water and hot steam;
• the material is quite light, comfortable to use and durable;
• PVC doors are characterized by good sound and thermal insulation;
• Plastic constructions are very diverse in design solutions and color palettes and can imitate the surface of absolutely any material;
• PVC doors are a cost-effective option (in contrast to glass doors).

Disadvantages

PVC doors deform quite easily. To avoid this, manufacturers usually reinforce the design with reinforcing tabs or mount the plastic leaf on a metal profile, which greatly increases their price.

These doors are most often used in narrow rooms with a large doorway. They can replace an entire wall.

In addition, a pivot door serves to divide zones in a room. For example, it is often used in a bedroom combined with a bathroom.

Usually it is very wide and easy to turn from left to right.

A characteristic feature of the microclimate of the bathroom is the lack of natural ventilation. And violation of the provision of air exchange threatens that when you open the door moisture will be displaced by air from the apartment and rise up to the ceiling. And this, in turn, can lead to mold and peeling paint. Therefore, it is extremely important to restore proper air exchange. Excellent help in this case are doors with ventilation grilles, which is mounted in any type of door.

Components of the grid are the main and counter parts. The first is a frame with so-called "blinds" on it. The second - is a frame without curtains, adjacent to the main.

Grilles are made of a variety of materials - plastic, metal and even natural wood. And the range of these devices on the market is very diverse. Usually, ventilation grilles do not spoil the appearance of the door and even give it originality.

When installing take into account the following nuances:

• At the point of installation of bathroom and toilet doors, a small threshold of about 5 cm is provided, which prevents flooding of the entire apartment. That is why bathroom doors must be placed higher than conventional interior doors by 10 centimeters.
• Since the walls of the bathroom in typical apartments are very thin - about 4-5 centimeters, it is necessary to choose not only the doors, but also a box of appropriate width. The ideal - when the box is thicker than the wall at most 1.5 centimeters - then its inner edge will be placed in the same plane as the wall of the room, which is tiled. Otherwise you will have to thicken the wall or cut unnecessary centimeters from the box, and with the sawing of the box, as you know, you should not experiment.

So, the dimensions are adjusted. You can do the installation, first making sure that the floor is perfectly level.

As a place to assemble the wooden frame should use a flat surface to avoid misalignment, because of which, after installation, doors sometimes do not open or close properly. The frame and the door leaf should be separated on both sides by a gap of at least 3 mm. Next, you will need to mark the places where the hinges will be attached, and make a slot for the side bars in the upper rung.

If the door does not fit, you can change the height of the door using the following methods.

The process of reducing the height of the door is only real for products made of wood, and you must be sure that this will not affect the quality characteristics of the material and model.

Consider another option to fix the problem - reducing the door opening (wall extension). We advise you to choose this method.

With the help of drywall, you can easily Extend the wall and reduce the door opening. We discussed this process in detail in the following article.

As a rule, the bottom part of the door, i.e. the bottom bar, is sawed off, but after some of the honeycomb cardboard filler is removed, you need to glue it back in. This whole process undoubtedly contributes to weakening the structure of the door, therefore, to avoid such situations, you should trust in the models of the required height of 190 cm, whose frame width is 6.5-7 cm.

Having chosen suitable doors for the bathroom, they need to be installed correctly. To begin with it is necessary to make measurements of the opening and the door frame. Sometimes the purchased door is taller than the door opening. In this situation, it will be easier to reduce the size of the door leaf and frame than to increase the size of the concrete opening. It is possible to reduce the height to 0.5 cm with a tool such as an electric planer, a jointer or a regular planer. This tool will serve to trim the door leaf, which should then be treated with sanding.

To reduce the height of the door by 0.5 - 1 cm will be required:

• a fleece saw,
• A circular saw or an electric jigsaw.

Excess material is cut off with a small margin using an electric jigsaw, then the end face is processed with sanding. Sanding should be done manually with a special grater, on which the sandpaper of the required grit is attached. This option is suitable for doors made of fiberboard and other materials.

In cases where it is necessary to reduce the height of the door by more than 5 cm, cut off the excess can be hand saw or electric jigsaw, then the process will be the same as in the situations described above. After removing the honeycomb, proceed to glue the MDF blades with PVA glue or masking tape. At the end, it is necessary to carefully hand sand the ends with a sandpaper.

When the opening turns out to be smaller than the purchased door, you need to make a difficult choice between sawing down the door or enlarging the opening.

If the space structure of the bathroom is made of plaster, with the help of a grinder you can increase the size of the door opening in just 10 minutes. But after the work there will be a lot of dust.

If the bathroom is made of slate and there is a steel strip over the opening, cutting is not recommended, as it contributes to the weakening of the cabin structure as a whole. Of course, it will not collapse, but cracks will form in the most vulnerable places. In this case, it is better to cut the doors.