Pocket door, Part 1

Alright, I've been sitting on a draft of this post for waaayyy too long, waiting for this project to be 100% complete before sharing. But apparently we are slower than a herd of asthmatic snails, so I'm slapping a "Part 1" on the post title and calling it a day. :-D

As I wrote about here, we'd been debating how to deal with the interior bedroom window that opens out over the living room. After debating pros and cons, price, aesthetics, etc., we decided we were on Team Pocket Door. This would entail ripping out a big chunk of drywall in the bedroom, but ultimately we thought it would look cleaner. Once we'd made the call, Jeff built us a custom-sized door to fit the opening.

We'd decided to use wood that would mimic the decking on the ceiling, and paint it white to match. Jeff brought it over to the house and I painted it, and then he and Brandon spent a couple of days working on the installation while I tried to keep the baby from eating drywall chunks. Here's Jeff adding framing for the pocket door track.

I didn't get very many photos of the process, but they were able to do a pretty standard pocket door installation - the only weird thing was the door itself, which was obviously not a standard size.

Here it is in place! Open...

...and closed...

They then added some nailers so that we could patch up that big 'ol hole in the wall.

Once it's done, it will sort of act visually like a giant headboard, since it sits right over our bed.

I am absolutely thrilled with it so far. It makes the bedroom feel infinitely more secluded and private, and it blocks noise pretty well too! This means that Brandon can take Matilda downstairs in the mornings, and mama can sleep in. SO WORTH IT.

It looks great from downstairs too - I like that it blends in pretty seamlessly, and doesn't stick out and visually compete with other features like the beams.

So where are we now? Well the drywall patch is actually already done, thanks to help from our super handy and definitely non-rabid friend Kit. She came over an embarrassingly long time ago to give us a hand, so it's hung, taped and mudded. We have to do another quick pass with the mud to hide the patch as best we can, and then sand and paint, and re-hang/caulk/touch-up the trim on the bedroom side. Then the last thing on the list is to find a good locking mechanism, since this little lady is getting dangerously close to mobile...