Master Bathroom Remodel – Pocket Door

When we bought our house, the master bathroom had a bifold door. That was one of the first things we ripped out. I’d rather have no door than a bifold one – we don’t live in an RV:

We initially installed a normal door that swung out instead of in since the bathroom is so tight on space. The door was one issue we had to figure out before starting the remodel. I didn’t want to keep a door that swung out so a pocket door seemed ideal. We never considered a barn door. I don’t understand why people use those for bathroom doors anyway. They don’t provide enough privacy/sound barrier for me.

Once the shower walls were exposed it seemed doable except for one issue. We had a light switch (for the closet area) located where the pocket door would slide. Luckily, we had enough room in the wall to move the light switch over. It was kind of pain since Mike had to go into the attic and the crawl space to undo the staples holding the wires to the joists and move them over. I’m so thankful that Mike is willing to go into both of those places because they are a room full of nightmares for me. The electrical getting moved over:

When we had our initial inspection, we made sure there was no issue with us installing a pocket door since it would be partly behind our shower wall. We did our research on pocket door framing and bought a Johnson Hardware pocket door frame.

Mike mostly installed the pocket door framing by himself. He said it was complicated and frustrating but he got it done:

We wanted to try to keep the drywall that faces the closet area intact so we wouldn’t have to deal with matching the wall texture later. Mike carefully removed the studs using a reciprocating saw to cut the nails:

In the meantime, I painted the door we purchased:

I also painted the raw wood around the pocket door track before we installed it:

The pocket door installed:

The door in the pocket:

After we finished the rest of the bathroom, we added trim around the door but not before we totally switched the door out. I decided the 6-panel door didn’t match the style of the bathroom so we changed it to a 2-panel shaker style. The new door with trim:

For the pocket door handle, we decided to use a round one so we wouldn’t have to notch the wood for the other types:

Mike did have to notch the wood for the latch plate. These were the steps to add it:

The finished latch plate with moulding:

Before & After pictures:

Next up is the Wall & Floor Prep post.