The home office has some bifold doors connecting it to the foyer. Normally I’d like to leave these doors open since it allows light & visibility to the front door, but that would also allow cats to enter the office (usually at the worst times). The solution seemed to be changing to bifold doors with glass panels, however these are very expensive. Since the existing doors were already good quality solid wood though, a good compromise seemed to be modifying them to add glass. I was able to find tempered glass for a reasonable cost online, so I went ahead with this project. Tempered glass is the key since it will break into small (less dangerous) pieces, it’s a code requirement for doors in most locations. The process went as follows:
- Cut a middle section out of the panels on each door. This allowed room for the next step.
- Pull the remnants of the panel edges out of the groove in each door frame.
- Route one side of the door frame flush with the bottom of the groove.
- Install glass panel.
- Make trim piece to hold glass in place, this piece basically replaces the piece of the original groove edge that was routed away.
- Carefully tack trim in place.
- Fill/Sand/prime/paint trim pieces.
