The Pocket Door

    I suppose that you could call this my very first home improvement project in my new house.  Replacing nails on the board that boards up the broken window on the dilapidated lean-to attached to my garage doesn't really count, but I do think this does.  While Traci worked on unpacking the last of the pictures and knick knacks (oh, and finding the mysterious lost box of kitchen items - which she did) I tasked myself with fixing two doors in the basement.  See, the basement is partially furnished, with a living room and a bathroom and an office (read bedroom that can't legally be called a bedroom).  There is a narrow hallway that connects the living room to the bedroom and on one side of that hallway there is a giant closet that was missing a door, and on the other side was the bathroom, accessed through a pocket door that had come off of its track and was stuck in a sort of half-closed position.
    Now pocket doors are a wonderful thing.  Instead of swining open like a conventional door, they slide into the wall and allow one to put a door in places where a door might not always be able to go.  So that is what I was dealing with in this situation, only it had some twists.  First of all, it was an ancient and heavy pocket door, that wasn't as well engineered as current ones generally are.  Second, it was in a very home-spun wall that didn't make a whole lot of sense.  But we will deal with that a little later.
     So I decided that I would begin with the closet door, because it was going to be the easiest I knew and I figured that I needed a little bit of a boost before I began.  So I grabbed the door and walked it over to the closet and stuck it in and it went wonderfully and perfectly.  I was a success at my first bit of the project.  That was cool.  Both doors slid past one another like butter and it was even on the right way.  Now on to the pocket door.
     I knew that the pocket door was going to be a lot, lot harder.  I messed with it a little while and looked into the situation.  There was a track that was installed WAY UP in the ceiling for the door to ride on, and there were some sketchy looking wheeled hardware that ran on it.  The problems that I immediately saw were two: 1.) I had to pull the door out of its normal line of travel in order to get the wheels back on the track, and 2.) I couldn't get my hands on either side of the door to remove it from its spot.  See, the door, when closed, was excatly the same size as the opening it was meant to cover.  So I couldn't get my giant Mickey Mouse hands around it to pull it outward from the bathroom.  Wonderful.  My gaze immediately turned towards the wall.

     It was going to have to go.  At least part of it was.  I began with the trim around the door and along the section of wall in the hallway.  I gently pried around the areas where it was nailed in and it began to give way in a couple of different ways.  Some of it came out like I wanted it to, where the nail came with the trim.  Good.  In some instances, the nails actually pulled through the trim and I had to remove them from the wall behind.  Anyway, what I found was not encouraging. 



This is the inside of our wall.  As you can see it is not a pretty sight.

   Yeah, it is. not great.  You can see the shower to the left, and the things sitting in the basement to the right.  The "bedroom" is behind the camera.  The paneling is pulled away from the wall and you can see all sorts of supports and studs inside the wall, none of which I will point out are 2x4s 16" on center.  But I digress.  That is the area in which the pocket door slides, and I had hoped to be able to pull it out there in order to get it on its track, but no suck luck.  There are too many supports, etc.  So I decided I need to deconstruct a little more.  The painted trim piece in the foreground would be the next to go.  In the next two photos you can see the offending door, now removed from its pocket, and a view of some of the trim pieces scattered around.

The offending door, now removed and put in the hallway.  Just off the top of the door is the sketchy hardware that is used to hold up the door and allow it to slide along the track.

You can see all the assorted trim pieces lying about the bathroom.  Notice too the super cool decor in the bathroom.  Lots of off-pink, if that's a color.

   Well it went, and the structural support part of the wall behind it too.  I use the term structural support loosely because it wasn't supporting anything more than the paneling and trim pieces, but it was still supporting something. So that had to come off too.  All so I could get the stupid door on the offending track that was way, WAY to high up in the wall.  Wanna see a picture?

Look at how far up into the wall this track is mounted.  How the hell was I supposed to get the door up in there.

     The good news, however, is that through perserverence and a large amount of luck I was able to get the door mounted onto the track.  I am not totally sure that it is mounted correctly, but it seemed to be the only way that it could go on, and it is traveling somewhat smoothly and is working.  So that was the good news.

The freshly remounted bathroom pocket door.



The door in a working condition.

 Now all that was left to do was to go ahead and put the trim pieces back on, oh, and replace the parts of the wall that I had to remove. 

In the process.  You can see that the trim pieces along the ceiling and the right hand side of the door have yet to be re-installed, but the trim along the floor (below the bottom of the picture) and at the end of the hallway are back.

All done.

    So what did I learn from my little project?  Let me put it in list for for you:

1.)  I am going to hate that pocket door, since I am pretty sure that it is going to fall off again sometime next week.

2.)  Always plan for twice the amount of time that you think you will need for any project.

3.)  There is a critical shortage of nails in my house.

4.)  I am going to find messed up stuff every time I do a home improvement project in this house.  I am pretty sure.

I also learned one bonus thing.  I was in the unfinished part of the basement using the concrete floor to straighten some nails (see #3 above) when I saw this:

The leg of the laundry tub.  That is the sump at left, with the ancient galvenized pipe.

That's right, one of the legs of the laundry tub in our basement is being held up by a hinge.  Bold strategy.  Luckily it is too rusted and painted to ever actually swing, plus it is mounted to the floor somehow, so I am just not going to mess with it.  You have to pick your battles sometimes, and this one just isn't worth the fight.  But the good news, however, is that things are fixed up in terms of the door.  I tested it this morning and it works just fine, you just have to be a little gentile with it.  So I term it a success.  This weekend we try again to get the couch in the house.  Now that should be a trip.