Shelving in doorway construction

[Mark Visconti]

I'm trying to create a built-in cabinet to go in the doorway between a room and back hallway that is never used. The back of the cabinet will likely obscure part of the hallway (at least 24" to 30"). I assume that just as soon as I install something very permanent, we'll need the full width of that hallway to move something. As a result, I'm trying to think of possible designs that would allow the shelving unit to be removed temporarily.

The cabinet doors need to sit flush with the wall of the room. I was thinking I could build a cabinet that was about 1" to 1.5" more narrow than the width of the door and then put cleats in the door and on the sides to stabilize it. In order to make it easy to slide in and out, I would put wheels in each corner hidden by the face frame and lowest shelf.

Any obvious issues with this? It's a bit more complex, because I will likely need to hide instead of remove the existing trimwork (wife believing it can all be put back to how it was at some point). That may make it difficult to appear completely permanent so I may need to move the cabinet doors from flush with the wall to 8" to 12" out so the unit would look like a shallow built-in.

Thanks,
Mark

[stew king]

I'm trying to imagine flush with the walls but covering existing trim...

If i were doing it, i might take your approach, but build it with 1 or 2 permanent shelves to hold it square in the front (of course, the back will maintain squareness there). That way you could build to nearly the door width and give a complete builtin look with a bit of matching face trim fitted into the reveal of the existing trim. I like your idea of wheels, because, as you said, permanent is never Permanent. I might not use swivel casters but simple non-steering ones, just make sure they won't take a set over the years and make movement difficult.

Maybe you might want to make the bottom trim of your cabinet easily detachable (magnets?) and also block up your casters to give yourself a bit of extra wiggle room on the bottom to allow for different floor options that might apply (new carpet among others). It would be a total bummer to realize that you can no longer just wheel out your cabinet.

G'Luck.