The Bathroom door

There hasn't been much activity here, but there has been a lot of activity on the house. We've just not done a good job of taking pictures of it.

Since we've been here the second-floor bathroom door has been less than adequate. It's a solid pocket door. When we moved in one of the rollers was broken completely. I tried to replace it with an off-the-shelf one, but it never really worked, and eventually it broke, too. This meant it was time to take out the entire old door header and put in a new, more substantial one. First step, rip out the wall and take the old door parts out:

Next step was to put in the new header

Next the steel-encased split studs that support the wall go in. This required the addition of a small access hole on the inside of the bathroom.

With all that in place, it was time to put new sheetrock in. All of this happened in one afternoon:

During this same time, the door was taken down and sanded, stained, and refininshed. Once it was complete, it could be hung. The new header had rollers that clamp onto brackets screwed into the door, rather than connecting to the door directly. This allows the door to be removed without taking out any trim or jamb pieces, something the old mechanism didn't offer. There is no way the rollers can come off the track, making it impossible for the door to fall off as it did before.


With the door in place, it was then time to replace the jambs. The old ones were fairly beat up, so I ran to Lowe's bought new pieces, stained and finished them and hung and shimmed them. The sheetrock was sanded and primed.

The original trim was taken down and stained and finished before reattaching it:

Inside view:
The final step was adding the reproduction antique hardware so the door could be pulled open and locked shut:

Closeup: