How To Install A Pocket Door

hi I'm Shannon from host improvements comm and in today's video I want to show you how to install a pocket door we bought a universal fit type package so everything basically comes in a box except the door you have to buy separately and the latch as well and it's me to fit a variety of anything from a 36 to a 24 inch door and there's a little bit of cutting you have to do to do that depending on your door but you know comes with all the brackets and the other miscellaneous hardware that you need it also comes actually with some pretty good instructions so you know if if my package is a little different than yours you know make sure you read your instructions because there could be some variance from manufacturer to manufacturer this is one that I use all the time but in your area it could be different one of the most important things about a pocket door that you need to do before anything is get your your rough opening made so in this case we're framing a brand new wall and basically I just had to get the rough opening built so that when the frame and everything is is cut and and put together it fits into this opening so the the instructions will give you some dimensions in in my case I believe this was they wanted a total height of eighty two and a half I believe it is no eighty four and a half now one thing to think about there because it's very important that your framework is all level and plumb okay so when you're doing this that's critical with a pocket door otherwise when it closes and stuff it's gonna look all wonky in there so so when also when you're doing that then you know I'll frame my wall but when I put this in I want to think about how unlevel my floor is so if your floor is out of whack you know even a quarter of an inch you can't just measure up from the floor because it's not going to be level so I measured my height from my highest part of my floor which happened to be over against that wall I measured it up and then I used a level to get the point over here instead of measuring and then after I did that I just added in the blocks that I needed whatever length they had to be so so anyways it is critical that that's all going to be plumb and level so I think that's basically the main gist this opening in most cases it just needs to be whatever your door width is in our case we're using a 28 inch door it needs to be double the door width plus an inch okay so we're 57 inches from stud to stud and that'll give you all the clearance you need they this should all be in your instructions too but they'll set the height that you need and it'll it'll again and give you a little bit of room to work with so okay so we've got that all done I'm gonna get some sawhorses out I'll show you what we do have to cut for this particular type of track and then we can start installing okay so in your kit what you should find is you've got usually four stud pieces so these are gonna go in here like this there'll be a set rate at the edge of the door or our door is gonna be here and the pockets gonna be back there so there's gonna be a set of studs here another stead of a set of studs about halfway like I said we shouldn't have to cut these to length but you should have four of those should have the little brackets these get mounted to the floor and the studs fit into them there's the rolling hardware and the miscellaneous miscellaneous is in that bag and then of course the track so with this particular brand the track all comes you know ready to go but it's got some markings on here for the different size doors and kind of shows you where you have to cut but the instructions also go through that as well so the first thing I need to do is take this bracket off this end down here and we'll just hang on to that because we're going to have to put it back on once we get this cut to length okay so we're using a two-foot Ford or 28 inch door and you can see right here on this header piece we've got the two-foot for mark on it so I've got to cut through that wood but only through the wood well I guess it wouldn't matter but the track actually gets cut shorter and then that allows the bracket to go on so your end would look just like the factory ended again so so we're going to cut the wood there and then cut the aluminum track I'm just going to use a reciprocating saw should do the job okay so that got me through the wood there's a couple screws holding it on there and then I need to cut that aluminum track I have it pre marked out here I think was an inch and three-eighths or something shorter than the wood okay a little bit of a scar there so that does that then on this end actually we need to take that bracket off no we don't I just need to cut the wood here so what will happen is I'm gonna cut right here and this is the exposed area where the door is so in our case actually it'd be like this I guess behind me this is where the door is when it's closed and this is the pocket area back there so we just need to cut this wood out of the way here that goes up the sides not the top piece just the side piece same thing on here and they've got this stapled together but these should just peel off in here okay we can throw our racket back on this end that we took off that just slips all together just bring it out flush to the end of the wood that you cut off this hole is slotted where the screw goes so on this one you can kind of get it closed and then adjust it okay just like so okay so that's our framework for in the door now what it for these guys they have a simple way of kind of getting your height right and this comes back to like I said before measuring from your header which you know is level and not from the floor they have a measurement that gives you a point over there that you put a flat-headed like a shingle nail into and that corresponds to this slot in two brackets so you can basically just take your frame then get it mounted on those two shingle nails and rotate it into position and it'll hang there until you get it fastened in permanently I've got that all marked out there's no point in me giving you those dimensions because yours could be different just check out your instructions but I'll just start these any luck at all I should just fit right in there binding there a little bit okay we'll just slide that back this bracket down here just needs to be loosened off like I said before it slotted so it can be adjusted for length like so now there's a series of holes in there just to put some more nails in and fortunately I didn't grab enough nails but I'll have enough just to get it stabilized so by sitting on that Center nail I should already be flush which I am these other nails are just to stabilize it from being tippy in there get one in each and I'll have to grab some more nails off okay so we've got our nails in there I'm just gonna throw the level on just to be sure that we're all nice and level that looks good I should check that beforehand I guess but okay so we've got that all in there and I was actually short a few nails so I've got to get some more and put him in there but it will do what we need to do for now well maybe reset the camera I'm gonna move some stuff out of the way okay so these studs like I said before I go I've got that in backwards okay I've got to pull that out this end I'm not sure if I said that right even in the beginning of the video this end I've got it have over here I've got this in backwards okay cut okay so we took our track piece off flipped it around the correct way and we did a few other things while we were off camera one thing we need to determine is we need a line drawn across here if you don't already have it from when you framed your wall we need a line just to tell where the wall wall space is there also just use a straight edge from end to end then use one of these studs again and a level we need to determine the point from up here down to the floor so just level down plumb down and get your mark marked on the floor so it's the same as this up here and then in the center of this opening from here to here we need another set of these studs put in so I just did the same thing I decided where I was going to have those use the level on one of them inside got a mark down there because you need to mount one of these brackets down there for the studs to go into okay so we we did mount that first bracket already and the studs we're going to do this one here that's right at the edge of the door so the first thing I'm going to do is we're working with cement floor here concrete floor so we've got to use a hammer drill and some concrete anchors in our case yours might just be a wood floor more than likely okay so I'm lining up the end of my bracket with that mark that we plumb down here and then with this pencil line that we just drew across here that represents the framing line okay so I'll just get a couple marks if you're in a concrete floor and you've got in-floor heat or anything like that you can't do this you'd have to glue these brackets down to the floor you don't want to drill into your heating system okay so we've hit something in that hole and I can't go any deeper with this bit so I'm gonna choose a different hole there's five different holes here to kind of go from so I'll try this one okay so those should work tighten these fasteners down like so okay and then on these studs they've got wood inside of a metal case the metal is to give us some strength the wood is so you can still attach your drywall and that sort of thing we need to mount these up there with a screw so I'm going to pre-drill through the metal so that I don't spend all day trying to get through it this floor is done so I'm not too worried about that I better put that it and drill okay so basically these two prongs here just fit into the grooves on these studs just kind of kind of a groove on there on there so this one's gonna go right up against there just screw not all these screws are provided for this part depending on your setup the stud I already had drilled okay so those these make up the studs of your cavity where the door is gonna slide between there before we get going along too far these roller brackets so these go up in the track and they leave a space here these these guys do so you can get it in or out when you put them in put them in opposite like that and it'll give your door a little bit more balance so I'm just going to tuck those up in there it's not a big deal you can put them in anytime but I like to put them up there so I don't lose them there's a bag of goodies here we're gonna have to come back once everything gets drywalled and everything and actually hang the door and finish the opening to complete this video so that'll be a little bit down the road so what I usually do is I just take all these goodies those rollers and even the instructions just kind of roll it all up and I put it up in the track if I can so that I know where it all is it's easier to find yeah well anyways you get the idea tuck it up there somewhere where you know you can find it so we'll come back when we're done with the drywall and ready to put the door in okay we're back now the drywall has been installed as you can see and primed unfortunately it kind of weights everything out being all so that the door is white so hopefully it's good enough that you can see what I'm doing just a quick touch on the door or sorry on the drywall you want to use inch and quarter screws same like standard length screws and if you do that then there's no chance of them fort routing through the back that's why these studs have metal wrapped on them not only gives them a bit of strength but it also keeps the screws from poking through and scratching the door so there's wood strips in those metal studs that you've seen me just installed and you just simply drive the drywall screws inch and quarter drywall screws right into that so so that shouldn't be an issue I've got a few things basically prepped here so that we could skip ahead a little bit I've got the jamb cut so we're gonna have a full width jamb that goes on this side once I get the door all in okay so that's pretty simple then I took another one of those and I had to rip it into two strips obviously right because we need a pocket for that door to slide into so these two go on this side generally speaking what you want is take your the thickness of your door and you want about 3/16 or so of an inch on each side of it for space so once you know the total thickness your wall and your door and all that you can figure out what you need for the strips so they'll also be two of those type of strips same width it'll go up on the top here as well okay yeah I'll touch on a little more detail on those after I've got my door here it's all painted I prepped up some of the stuff on it one of the main things and and hardware you'll find for this all comes with the track there's a rubber bumper that you put on the backside of the door so that's the end of the door that's gonna slide right back inside and it's just a rubber bumper to keep it from you know make a bunch of racket when it gets pushed open and then up top on the door I'm just kind of lean it over here so you can see I've already mounted upper hardware on it so if I lean the door here these uh these little brackets or whatever you want to call them that's what the roll the roller shaft fits into so when the rollers up in the jamb and you hang the door on it that just slides in there and this little lock pushes over cameraman's telling me you can't really see what if I turn to the side a little bit so that stud there slips inside of this like so and then this little latch will push a little further than I just pushed it and clamp on there to keep them from falling off okay these these brackets all the stuff comes with with the track Hardware this particular one requested that these brackets are mounted two inches back from the edge of the door that's pretty standard don't get too close to edge of the door or the rollers gonna fall out of the track so you'll also notice that the top of the door has been at least primed to help seal it and keep it from warping and twisting so make sure the top all the edges taut bottom everything is done okay so I'm just going to stand that door back up it's just 2 2 screws again they're supplied that's all that holds those on there so I think what we'll do we'll reposition the camera a little closer and I'll actually get the door hanging on those rollers get it into cavity and then we can put the casing our than not the casing the jams all on ok so I've got my two rollers back in here you can see the stud just hanging down there that little bit this first one to get it hooked on I try to come in on a pretty perpendicular angle so that I'm pushing against here and it prevents the roller from scooting away on me while I'm getting that first one on so I'll turn the door here a bit hopefully you can see all this pretty tight quarters so I've got that one kind of on there and I lock the little lock now you got to be careful especially if your doors all prefinished like mine is getting it in there because if you rub on those metal studs too much it's going to leave a mark then I'm gonna hold that up there star enough or get that one slid in at that point the doors basically hanging put my ninth way before I cut my arm off doors basically hanging it's just a matter of getting that lock pushed it over like that so it Clips right on now when we would put the trims all on you'll notice that we're gonna put the side jams up first and they're gonna go right to the top and the the header jamb piece is gonna fit between them and the reason for that is you're gonna have to take this piece off if you ever have to take this door on and off or adjust it so you need to be able to get it off without taking you know all the jams off okay so I've got that basically hanging in there I'm just carefully trying to get it between the studs without rubbing and like so so not too much to get not hanging on there now we can basically just push that back out of the way for right now and we can deal with the jams okay so we'll put these jams on that's just like any Jam you want to be flush with the surface of the wall okay so that's earlier in the video I mentioned about how important it is to have everything plumb and as straight as you can and that's why because you know if you can attach that rate to that stud without having to sham or anything it'll make your installation so much easier and once we go to align the door we'll be able to see you know if this is pretty good you'll always you almost always have a little bit of you know weave to it or whatever but main thing is you want to be as plumb as you can now on this side I've already put the inside one on but on this what you're actually doing is you've only got this little window here in the metal and there's some wood back there to nail in to in fact in this one the woods almost missing but so take your your pieces here first off and premark measure and Mark your nail locations so that you can hit those because I mean obviously once you hold this in place you can't see those right okay so mark out your your locations I generally like to use a little bit of some kind of adhesive here as well just to tack it on there a little bit more it should basically not have to take this so I'll just put a few dabs right on that metal because you know we can only get I don't know what they've got a little spaced apart 16 or 18 inches apart don't put so much on that squirts out and you get it on your door but just get someone there to help hold it between the nails okay so same thing with this one we're just putting this edge flush now when I rip this down I also sanded and painted the inside edge because you can see when the doors you know push back you can kind of see that edge so okay so I'm just gonna get that kind of held in place you'll notice as I'm nailing these I'm keeping my hands well back I've got the safety glasses on because if this beers off and hits that metal or whatever if nothing else the end of that nail is gonna ricochet back and come out somewhere in stab yeah okay so that all glued on there I can see I've actually got a little bit of glue sticking out there I'm just gonna use my knife blade and just wipe it flat right now while I'm thinking of it so that we don't get it on the door like I had just mentioned a minute ago the one seemed fine it was just those couple okay so we've got those two in place now the upper ones I won't deal with the one on that side you don't really need to see me do it twice so basically this wants to be cut so it fits between those two and so that it also can be taken off if you have to to get that door out if you ever have to or to do the adjustment actually I guess I should adjust the the door before you get back in the way let's back up a little bit so in your kit you should end up with a little ranch of some kind some kind of tool that works on those studs up there just get our door close to closed so if you look down there I think we're pretty good we're actually really good I would call that definitely good enough we've got a little bit of space here we could play with that a little bit yeah we're absolutely good normally though you know you might have the top or the bottom thing hitting first you know the door might be not hanging quite level or maybe the side is off a little bit so what you want to do is just use this little ranch up in here and that basically just it's basically a screw stud type thing you hung that on and it's gonna actually if you look create at the bottom when I'm turning this one you might be able to see that I'm kind of moving and adjusting that gap there a little bit it's very minut a little bit that I'm turning it just like so so you just adjust the tooth till you get an even space there and you're happy with it or we got kind of lucky and everything I just shows that I guess those were adjusted pretty straight from the factory because I haven't played with anything yet but and if they're straight and we're all level and plums so okay so we got that in I'll throw this top piece in and then we can show how to install the not sorry the latch so I'll just put this one in here they recommend if you read the instructions they actually recommend and they send screws for it pre drilling and attaching this with screws into this piece of wood that was already mounted on the track frame and that's just so it's easier to get on and off if you ever have to really once you've adjusted this the first time and everything's fine there's probably not much chance you're ever gonna take it off so what I do I don't glue this but I'll just Brad nail it on because the Brad nails you can always pry loose if you have to take it off so I usually just Brad nail it because I can fill those holes nicer than a big you know number six screw hole okay so this is just the same as all the the other just flushed to the face of the drywall okay I just like soul and I'd obviously just go around and fill all those little holes and retouch the paint up after okay so we've got all those on before I get to the latch I'll show you what we do with the guides there's two two little plastic guides that go down here at the bottom so the camera will have to come right down in here so these little guides just kind of a wedged piece of plastic with this slotted area on the back and what they do is they go on either side down here at the bottom edge of the door and you just adjust them until you get a nice even gap on either side of the door and it all works without binding and rubbing anywhere so once you're happy with what you've got that's why they're tapered and you don't want it wedge right up tight because the door has to be able to move in and out too I don't know if you can really even see what I'm doing there probably once I get the screws and you can get a better shot but so I'm just pulling those up to where I'm happy with the spacing on each side of the door in that and using the supplied screw to install it okay so I'll do the same thing on the other side and then I'll let the camera guy get a shot of it for you guys actually that one probably gotta come up just a bit harder that's why they're slotted so it lousy a little bit of adjustment come on screw cooperate so you can see that takes the wobble out of the door and just acts as a guide to keep it from rattling around or rubbing on the sides okay so the next thing we're gonna do is that we're gonna actually install a latch up here now the latch doesn't come with the door there's a few different styles as a round one and there's this one so you've got to purchase that separately and we're just get to kind of reset here and I'll show you how to do it okay so we've got our latch here and depending on what lash you use just follow the instructions they'll be right on the package as far as whether you're drilling a round hole or in this case where we're cutting out with the jigsaw kind of visit the c-shaped area so all I did was centered it in this this style here on the door this rail is where I wanted it you can put it wherever you want so okay so I'm just going to use the jig saw and cut that all out and install the latch I've got the tape on there just to protect the door okay so we've got the latch all notched in there that's there's no real trick to that this is a locking latch and most of them will be so you've got a actually got a little thing here so when the doors right back you can get a hold of it to get the door oh for one thing but you've also got this latch here that's gonna hook you in on this side too close to hold the door closed I'm just gonna mark with some pencil on the end of it and then when I slide it over here and operated a couple times it should leave a basically a mark for a reference for me to get things lined up okay so I'm not sure that you'll pick that up on camera but it left me a mark right here okay now the other thing I'm gonna do I'm gonna slide the door closed again I should just double-check usually the latch plate is the seam yeah same size as the end of this latch on the door so once I close the door if I I can just use that as a reference to get the height so I'm gonna close it I'm just making a pencil mark this is the bottom there so this is all just to get get myself a reference okay now from that mark those marks there I can determine exactly where this goes the one gives me center of this opening and actually I should mention you can notice that this opening is offset in there as well and so you want it offset to the to the awkward position and what happens is then the latch swings in there and hooks in on the bottom part so just in case I forgot to mention that later okay so I'm just lining it up with my two marks there and what I'm gonna do is hold it there still I'm actually gonna use my knife to trace it out let's leave a nice fine mark on the jamb for us to cut too trick is not moving out at all okay so we got that in there now I've got a drill hole and I just kind of forget I think it's in the center of that yeah center of the mortise so the mortise is this slot here so I'm gonna just roughly with my pencil with my I mark Center height wise in that mortise as well because we need to drill a bit of a hole there too and that's just still our room for that latch to go in so we've got our knife line I'm just gonna run through it again to make sure it's visible when I remove the tape and this is just gonna get cut out with the chisel because we want to notch it back the thickness of this latch so it's sitting back in there flush hopefully now these gems are MDF MDF isn't the nicest stuff to chisel with and create a mortise into it's kind of tricky compared to real wood but we'll see how we make okay so I'm going to drill this hole I believe it says to go half an inch deep ish and that was centered with the latch must be real close there okay I think to stop right there I can remove my tape because my knife lines should be cut into the MDF for us to fall state peeled off okay like so then I'll just take the chisel and my hammer and I'm just gonna try to get just ever so a little bit out in fact I'm gonna score it again once more with my knife cutting it with the knife should get it deep enough for the thickness of the plate that we're using it's likely the most challenging part of the whole install is just doing this little plate here okay so we'll see okay so usually your initial a little bit I'll just peel right out and you can just finally do that from there my knife cut down there your chisels good and sharp it'll really help this process as well you just have to be careful not to go too far if you rip out a big chunk where you don't want it out so then you're gonna have to fill it you touch up all the paint just keep your latch close by and just keep fitting it as Eagle so I'm close just work away at it till you get it right so once you get the fit you want there's a couple screws to install actually I have my doubts whether that latch is going to latch I can see that my drilled hole there mm-hmm cool there is kind of obstructing the opening a little bit so I'm just going to chisel this down a little bit extra to give it a little more room not so sure that centering in that hole was exactly the right thing I should give me a little bit of room for it to latch okay so we'll just see if it operates correctly well we got lucky we got it the first try so yeah just you know if you have to do any final little adjustments or whatever one little hint that I'll pass on that sometimes if you get this latch too high what you can do is actually take a die grinder and just grind out that much just a little bit more to make it work or even flip it around since it's offset you might get lucky all right I think we've got the the main stuff done we're just going to show you a view from inside here because we don't have drywall on this side just so you can kind of see the door opening closing in the wall okay so we don't have this side of the room drywalled and we'll just kind of show you so you can see that the mechanism up there you can see the rollers a lot you might not be able to see the rollers but you can see the space there because we don't have that top trim piece in you can see our latch down here okay and then you can just see as it slides into the wall now typically this would be covered obviously right but so what it does is just slides right in the wall this bumper here eventually contacts back there just keep the door from going too far in in fact this is a little far in for my liking since I have the wall open I'll probably put an extra little piece of wood there just to I like to keep the door just just out just that little bit like you see on this edge here that's about how I'd like to see it right now with the bumper it actually pushes in pretty far now not really a big deal because you've got this built into the latch to to get a hold of it but just for looks I like when it looks something like that okay so you can kind of see the operating parts of it well that's our video on installing pocket door hopefully you found it informative and helpful if you've already done a pocket door before maybe you're gonna complete your pocket door project after you've watched our video make a comment below and let us know how it turned out hopefully the tips that I gave you will save you a little bit of headache along the way and speed up the process for you also if you liked the video you can click the thumbs up button just below here and subscribe to our channel as well and then you can follow us on and watch all of our great videos you can if you have any questions you can go to our forum and post all your questions on the forum and I'll be sure to answer you from there if you haven't got sick of me by then you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter and just see what else is going on in our day to day lives here at house improvements calm we've also got a patreon campaign going so if you'd possibly like to sponsor you can look at that as well so thanks a lot for watching and hopefully your next project goes well

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 623,855

Rating: 4.880671 out of 5

Keywords: pocket, door, hidden, slide, wall, interior, framing, how-to, diy, install, construction, home, house, walls, doors, reno, renovation

Id: IKS9tGa2Gos

Length: 45min 21sec (2721 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2016