Many places for that system to go sticky 1 - Check the door alignment and the top suspension. Slamming them open and closed can make them derail. Or something may have lodged in the path of the wheels. 2 - Clean the lower track with a stiff brush and mineral spirits, then spray some TEFLON lubricant onto a cloth ans swab the tracks.

Wow - thanks for all the feedback! Still digesting it all but here's some random late-night thoughts. I do see his point about the doors. On our main floor (which is obviously heated and air conditioned) we have a few doors made from tongue and groove pine in the barn door style and they have warped and flexed -- in the summer, they swell and stick, in the winter, they warp. I consider it part of the charm of the house but I could definitely see how that much movement might cause problems on a sliding track. hoosiergirl - those look like the doors I found that are a thousand bucks a door! They are cool though! natal - those drapes look cool, but those openings are small. I can't picture 18 feet of drapes....that seems overwhelming to me. All the suggestions for built-ins and such would be wonderful, but we're pretty far along so I think it would be costly to change now. Besides, the things that are getting stored here aren't pretty (rubbermaid tubs full of thomas tracks and other random toys) so I definitely like the idea of closed doors. My kids are 6 and 9 so I'm thinking they shoudl be able to manage the doors without hurting themselves. And once we outgrow the need for this much toy storage, I plan to fill the closet up with christmas decorations and sporting equipment and other bulky ugly stuff anyhow. So anyhow, right now, my current thinking is to use 5 completely flat doors and one paneled one (I didn't want to confuse you in the original post, but one of the doors needs to have a grille in it because the dehumidifier will live in this closet as well. So I was thinking of cutting the middle panel out of the single flat panel door (thanks for the correct term bronwynsmom!) and replacing it with metal grille to allow for air circulation to the dehumidifier section of the closet. I was even thinking I could bolt two doors together into a 6 foot door (maybe even use wood putty to hide the "seam" down the middle - think that would work?). Then I'd have 3 6ft doors that I'd just paint with chalkboard paint for now. The plain flat door blanks are dirt cheap so I could try this approach for now and, if I wasn't happy with it, I guess I could try building my own barn doors later. There are two things that concern me about this plan though -- one is that the end door would actualy have one flat door and one paneled door bolted together (to allow for the air grille) - that might look dumb. Plus with the 6 foot doors, there will be alot of the area covered at any point in time -- one of the tracks is always going to have 12ft of door on it. Versus if I just hung the 3 ft doors alternating -- then I'd have each track with 9 ft, exposing an additional 3 ft with the doors all the way open. I suppose I could get around this by having 3 separate tracks instead of 2, but I'm not sure the door opening has the extra depth for that and we're hemmed in by ductwork so I don't know if we could make the space if we wanted to. I'm terrible with visualizing stuff like this in my head, so I think I need to draw it out on paper. Bronwynsmom -- the idea you describe about jointing two paneled door blanks together - can you explain it again? I've read your paragraph over and over and it sounds intriguing, but I'm not quite getting exactly what you're describing. Anyhow, thanks again for the feedback. I've got a few days to figure it out, so keep any ideas coming!

If you do try curtains, use curtain rings. If you use the rod pocket to hang the curtains, it is somewhat difficult to slide the curtains back and forth. The few times I've seen this, the curtains mostly stay open all the time. But if you use rings, the curtains will slide back and forth easily. You can whisk the curtains apart, and then close them with a sweep of your hand. If you'd rather have doors, why not get a handyman to give you an estimate of how expensive it would be to alter pre-fab doors to fit your closet? It sounds like the only thing keeping you from doors is the extra work involved. If you really want doors and don't want to do the work, it might be worth paying someone to do it for you.

The negative comments are out there everywhere. But almost all of them are from a few years ago, when there were issues with the cords and stuff breaking, and not being serviceable. Pella has made many changes to the line, and has improved them quite a bit. While I'd challenge the "best gliding door on the market" claim, (I'm an Andersen man personally), they do make a high quality product. Be sure to follow the installation and finishing instructions very carefully, as that is the key to lasting quality. The triple pane is a nice addition, giving you a thin insualted glass on the outside, then the cavity for the blinds/shades, then a removeable pane on the interior, giveing good thermal performance. The only down side, really, is the added weight per panel which can wear out hardware, i.e. rollers. That, and they carry a hefty price. But if you have young kids, or pets, the extra cost may be worth it.