Seeing Double Pocket Doors! (At last!)

We now have two matching pocket doors, mirroring each other, flanking the refrigerator wall in the kitchen and everything finally feels right.

I know many of you will be sad to see our sliding barn door go--we really loved it, too. The quick back-story of the sliding door is: Three years ago, when we decided to add a barn-style door to the dining area, it was before the laundry room was even the laundry room! Which is so crazy to look back on (you can see it all right here). There was a traditional door leading to a bathroom (with another door) to the right and a hallway with laundry at the end on the left. It was a very door-riddled area and a sliding door leading into the space (it's always been Charly's little sanctuary back there) was the perfect solution for us for nearly 3 years.

And while we knew that whole area of our home was going to evolve, there were some things that we didn't know at the time. The kitchen plans weren't even close to finalized at that point, which means there was no plan for our walk-in pantry in the works, which means there was no vision for a pocket door on that side of the refrigerator.

But once those things did come into the picture, it was really clear to us, the door leading into our now laundry room should match the pantry one.

If anything, it was a really great lesson for us that although something may be a great solution or addition to your home at some point, it's okay to revisit it in a few years and make adjustments. The sliding barn door went to a local reader who is actually putting it in her kitchen and we're so excited it's getting a good home.

We've actually been sitting on this project for a little bit because installing a pocket door, even if you aren't going to do it completely yourself, is a disruption and messy. All-in-all it took 2 days. We decided to hire out part of it, since ours also required moving light switches.

We paid our handyman $250 to:

- Move the double light switch from one side of the doorway to the other
- Take out the drywall on the dining room side
- Fit in the pocket door frame
- Re-sheetrock, mud, tape and texture
- Hang Pocket Door

We saved some money by doing a few things ourselves. We stained the front and back of the door (Minwax English Chestnut), trimmed out the new door, caulked, gave everything a fresh coat of paint and added the pocket door hardware.

Notching out the front flat pull and edge pull hardware for the pocket door took a combination of a hammer, chisel, Dremel and drill--and a lot of patience. I'm sure some sort of router would have been ideal for this, but Chris got both pieces in seamlessly with his work-with-what-we-got method.

And I couldn't have asked for a better result!

Like I said at the beginning of this post, this was a project that we really have been thinking needed to happen since putting in the walk-in pantry and now it's as if it always was.

Of course the other perk to this is the dining room wall no longer is half taken up by the barn door--and I've been eyeing it for some family photos. Stay tuned!

SOURCES

32" Pocket Door Frame | 32 in. x 80 in. 1 Lite Unfinished Red Oak Privacy Woodgrain Interior Door Slab | Minwax English Chestnut Stain | Flush Pull Pocket Door Hardware | Edge Pull Hardware  | Wall Color : Benjamin Moore Hazy Skies (eggshell)

All other kitchen and home sources can be found here!