How to Fix Swinging Closet Doors

Whoever owned this house before us kindly put in new carpeting throughout the entire upstairs right before we moved in. However, when they laid the new carpet into the closets, they removed any sort of track system the sliding doors may have had. This left us with three rooms whose closet doors swung all over the place whenever we moved them.

We painted these doors with chalkboard paint for our office!

Enter these nifty things: Prime-Line N 6563 Sliding Closet Door Bottom Guides.

I got them on Amazon for $2.27 for a pack of two. I picked up three packs but only wound up using two. I wanted to have a backup on hand in case I messed anything up too terribly.

I lined up the guide with the closet doors properly by making sure the doors were hanging straight. I didn't want to have to drill into my carpet more than necessary.

Then I drilled pilot holes directly down into the flooring, which occasionally gave me one of these:

But once I pulled the extra carpet off (I couldn't even tell where in the carpet it was missing - it got hard to find my pilot holes to put the screws in!) I didn't have any more trouble.

Then I just popped the screws through the guide and into my pilot holes:

And ta-da! No more swinging closet doors! I put four of these into the closets of the nursery, office, and guest room (the office needed two because it has three doors). Plus now I feel much better about the doors' stability once my young son starts to get mobile. Best $5 I've spent in awhile!