ORC Week 4 The Pocket Door

We are past the halfway mark of the One Room Challenge Spring 2020 season! I feel like the time is equally dragging and flying by. Which is basically how all time feels during social distancing. This week I’m going to share how we moved a pocket door from our kitchen to the bathroom! It was a huge undertaking and we are still in disbelief that it actually worked.

This idea started as just that – an idea. Our kitchen is closed off with two pocket doors at each entrance. Since we knew we would never use them, we started wondering if we could move them to the bathrooms. Both of the bathrooms are small, but the en suite is particularly cramped, and a swinging door made it feel even smaller. The door also blocked the window when it was open. And since I am essentially a house plant, I wanted to maximize the amount of natural light available in the house. The answer to these problems – a pocket door!

The risk of moving the pocket door was small. We would eventually be removing them from the kitchen when we renovate. And the bathroom was already gutted. If the pocket door didn’t fit, we would have gotten a new one or sucked it up and put the old standard door back in. About 5 hours into the project, we both really started hoping that it would work. Although the process was free, it was SO much work. And as always, the majority of that work was done by Colin. Because he’s amazing and good at all things construction. I mostly knocked out drywall and removed screws and took direction from him. But all the hard work was worth it when we slid the pocket door frame into the bathroom cutout and it fit!

If you are thinking about installing a pocket door in your small bathroom, I would highly recommend it! It makes a big impact in a small space and we can’t wait to put one in our other bathroom! I wish I had more of a how-to for you, but honestly it was just a lot of demolishing walls and pulling out nails and screws until the frame came loose. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have and I will do my best to answer them. AKA I will ask Colin and report back with his answer 🙂 Be sure to check out all the work being done by other guest participants and featured designers this Spring! Just prepare to be inspired to redo every room in your house! Have a great end of the week, everyone. And thank you as always for reading this blog!