ᐅ Pax / PAX Malm IKEA Assembly Instructions and Support for Sliding Doors

Hello everyone,

I’m a new member here in the forum and I’m coming straight to you with a problem. I’ll try to explain it. If it’s not clear, I can provide the “correct” names for the parts later at home; here at work, I only brought my concerns and not the assembly instructions.

Starting situation:
– Two cabinet carcass parts of the Pax system. Of course, still containing various items, several shelves, three drawers, and a hanging rod.
– The carcasses were connected to each other as described in the instructions—with three of those screws. I drilled and screwed once at the top, middle, and bottom.
– Mounting to the wall: both parts were attached to the wall with two screws each, through the openings at the top.
– This means the carcasses are now firmly fixed, which makes sense but might be the cause of my problem.
– Oh, and an important detail: since we live in an old building and nothing is perfectly straight, and because we wanted to fix the cabinet to the wall, we tilted it slightly against the wall and supported the front bottom with wooden shims. This is quite stable but probably not perfectly level everywhere.

So far, everything went smoothly.

Now I wanted to start assembling the sliding doors (my wife says they are called Pax Malm? Anyway, sliding doors—one or even both of them might be mirrored doors, I’m not exactly sure at the moment, I haven’t unpacked them yet). The first step was attaching four gray plastic clips on top of the cabinet, which were supposed to “clip” and secure the metal rail later on.

There should have been a “click” sound when inserting the metal rail. The metal rail was quite difficult to insert into those plastic clips but, with some effort and force, it worked.

So, the metal rail was clipped on top of the cabinet.

Now the problem came: the next step is to screw the metal rail to the cabinet from underneath. For this, six plastic clips should be snapped into the metal rail and then screwed from above into the cabinet ceiling.

I tried doing this first in the middle of the cabinet. It didn’t work because the metal rail was not fully flush against the cabinet at the top but had some distance. This caused the plastic clip from underneath to not fit in height.

When I tried to screw the metal rail tighter in the middle (using one of the four plastic clips mentioned earlier) to remove the gap between the rail and the cabinet top, the plastic clip in the middle broke, along with my nerves, peace of mind, enthusiasm, and optimism.

My assumption:
Is the cabinet deeper in the middle than at the edges? So the metal rail can’t be adjusted properly. Even if I bent the rail a little (the gap between rail and cabinet only a few millimeters (inches)), that would not be a solution, as the sliding doors might not hang optimally and, in the worst case, could slide toward the middle due to gravity. I can’t say how much of a slope that would be.

My question:
Has anyone had a similar problem?
What should I try? I’m thinking of loosening the screws between the cabinet carcasses as well as the wall attachments and then attempting to raise the center of the cabinet with a thicker wooden shim to lift it there?
However, as I said, I have lost my optimism and internally feel overwhelmed by the sliding doors as a hobby assembler.

Do you have any tips or suggestions?

Many thanks in advance for reading.

I would separate the carcasses again, detach them from the wall, and realign them. Definitely use a spirit level for this. Since PAX cabinets have adjustable feet, this should be fairly easy. Only when all edges are perfectly flush and the carcasses are level should they be connected to each other. A 60cm (24 inches) deep cabinet is unlikely to tip over unless fully loaded hanging rods are swung out or many fully loaded drawers are pulled out. So don’t pull the cabinet tight against the wall with the brackets; just anchor it lightly so that it won’t be knocked over even during a strong outburst.

Hello everyone,

First of all, thank you very much for the tips.

It took me a few tries, but now the wardrobe including sliding doors is installed. I would like to share where the problems were and what I did.

Which mistakes I made.

My overall impression of the Pax Malm sliding doors.

Maybe this will help someone someday.

Problem 1:
The floor was uneven, causing the cabinet to lean slightly. This mainly prevented me from installing the metal strip on top of the cabinet, as there was a gap of several millimeters (inches) in the middle.

Attempts to fix the problem:
Adjust the cabinet using the feet
Move the cabinet away from the wall
Remove the connection screws between the carcass parts

--> These steps were supposed to level the cabinet. It didn’t work because I believe the feet were not able to support the full weight or compensate for a height difference of this size.

--> After that, I moved the cabinet slightly away from its position in the room, slightly away from the corner. The floor seemed to be most uneven in the corner.

--> This caused the cabinet to stand almost level. Not perfectly, but close enough. I was then able to install the metal strip on top and finally start building the sliding doors.

Problem 2:
During my first attempt, I broke a plastic part.

--> I called Ikea. They sent me a replacement part to my home free of charge, even though I told them over the phone that I had broken the part myself. I consider this excellent customer service, which really surprised me, and I thank Ikea for it.

Issue 3:
Some parts were missing. We had everything delivered to our home, and since we ordered several pieces of furniture at once, it was impossible to check whether the delivery was complete.
Because the sliding door was the very last part to be assembled, and I had also taken some planned time off for this, 1.5 weeks had already passed.

--> Call to Ikea, I also sent an email but have not received a response yet. I would recommend calling or simply visiting Ikea in person, as this was ultimately necessary. The person on the phone only checked if the part was in stock at that location.

--> Visited Ikea and took a number at the “we will serve you within 10 minutes” counters. This didn’t quite work out on a public holiday in Baden-Württemberg; we were there around 7:00 pm (19:00). But even there: no real questions were asked about whether I had possibly already received the missing part and was now trying to get it again dishonestly.

--> It’s incredible how customer-friendly Ikea is in this case. Thumbs up all around!