tito's Profile

I was feeling spending a few months ago and decided to plunk down the $1350 or so for a set of doors from the Sliding Door Company. This was for a standard size closet opening (I'd hate to see the price for something custom).

I already own a set of Pax Doors from IKEA. I was hoping to get a better product by paying more for the Sliding Door Company's product. You get what you pay for, right? The truth is, I didn't.

When comparing the two side by side, I initially thought the SDC doors were significantly better quality. Looking back now though, I think I was suffering from that weird psychological condition where you think a product is superior just because it's more expensive (crap, first my Diesel jeans and now this). Material-wise, the two products are very similar. They are both constructed of brushed aluminum and glass. It's hard to say one is really "nicer" or "better" than the other. Installation-wise, I'd have to give the upper hand to the SDC doors. They were a bit easier to install than the PAX doors.

These doors ain't cheap, right? Hey, it actually gets worse! Keep in mind you have to pay a few hundred extra bucks to get these doors shipped to you if you don't live close enough to pick them up. I have to admit though, the doors came very packaged and nothing was broken. I guess you get some pretty sweet cardboard and styrofoam for that much cash.

The SDC doors come with all sorts of options. I thought it was really cool to customize the doors on their site and see how it looked with 3 pane, 4 pane, etc. Here's the deal though - Each door is actually a single pane of glass and they make you purchase the aluminum dividers separately, which gives you the partitioned look. This is both cool and crappy at the same time.

It's cool because you don't have to commit to how many panes you want on each door when ordering. You can wait until the doors are installed and then play with different combinations to see what looks the best.

Okay, so the crappy part. I can't remember off-hand, but each set of six dividers cost somewhere between $50-100. I think I've tried to block out this figure due to its absurdity. The dividers are just regular strips of aluminum that adhere to the glass with double-stick tape. It's absolutely ridiculous how much they charge for what these things really are. Double-stick tape..come on! It sucked worse for me too because I wanted five panes per door - meaning I had to order two sets!

To wrap up... the doors I purchased from the Sliding Door Company are decent, good looking, modern doors, but seriously overpriced. They're just totally not worth it when you start comparing it to a product like IKEA's Pax system. Why pay like three times the price for something that's not noticeably better (if at all).

The bad part about the Pax doors is that they only come in a few standard sizes. I just saw that the Home Depot is starting to carry some similar modern looking doors. I didn't price them out, but I would think they would be a cheap alternative to the Sliding Door Company's product.

-Tito