re: Pocket doors

I installed one myself over 10 years ago, but I did not put it into an existing wall. We demo'd one of our bathrooms down to the studs, and put a laundry room and half bath in there instead. Long story, old house, laundry hookups in the basement etc. It was part one of a two part renovation, and part two was converting our old den into a master bath with walk in closet and a separate room for the shower and toilet.

I bought a pocket door kit from Lowe's, and we had an existing wall where our shower head and tub faucet were previously. I removed all tile and drywall from that wall, and once I had it down to the studs we removed the plumbing. Then I built a new wall that attached to it, and made a header for above the door. I used the pocket door kit, and put up new drywall over everything once it was built. Attached the door, put up trim work and door casing, and it was pretty easy, just tedious and time consuming.

I don't know that I would want to try and take an existing wall and make it into a pocket door. The process would be roughly the same, you would still have to get the kit and work it into the space, but in our case having an empty space to work from meant I could frame around the door, and not have to cut into existing studs.

The only reason we wanted to go with the pocket door was I didn't want the door opening into the half bath and hitting the toilet, and also didn't want it opening out into the laundry room and getting in the way there. I like leaving it open all the time unless someone is using that half bath because our HVAC has a vent low on the wall in there, and closing it off would mean that room staying frozen and outside if would have been warmer.