Have you ever tried getting ready in a bathroom only for the door to keep getting in your way? That was my life for several months when we moved into our first house. Our bathroom was tiny.
Like cowboy-commode-on-one-wall tiny. Then someone had thought it would be a good idea to install a ridiculously wide wooden door that swung into the bathroom. It took up about half the floor space when it was open so every morning I did this silly routine of opening the door, getting into the bathroom sideways, closing the door (because it almost touched the toilet), then shimmying across the room so I didn’t bang my hipbone on the sink.
Danny found this hilarious. He used to watch me dance around our bathroom in the mornings whilst mocking me by calling it my “embarrassing dance routine.” But honestly, after a while it started to really annoy me.
When we first moved into our house in Bulwell it needed lots of updating so I told myself the door was the least of my worries.
HA! So very ha. It wasn’t until I was running late one morning and trapped myself between the bathroom door and sink whilst reaching for my toothbrush that I decided enough was enough.
You can’t be freaking late for work every morning because your stupid door won’t stay open! That day I marched straight down to B&Q and started asking about pocket doors. Until then I’d never even heard they were a thing, but boy are they game changers.
A pocket door slides into the ‘cavity’ in your wall so when it’s open it disappears. Swinging doors are always going to take up more room than a pocket door ever will. It was one of those lightbulb moments.
Once I’d committed to getting a pocket door I spent hours trawling through YouTube researching how to install them, what brands were good, what were bad. You need to make sure your wall has enough cavity space to fit the door, so I spent even more time measuring our bedroom wall. I ended up going with a frosted glass pocket door.
They weren’t cheap – the door was around £300 and then we paid another £500 to get a carpenter to come and install it for us. Did I try and do it myself? Hell no.
I’ll pay someone else to do DIY for me every time. No regrets whatsoever. Pulling back that door each morning and having actual space to move around in the bathroom is pure heaven.
Little things. Swapping the door did come with it’s challenges though. Our Victorian terrace has walls that are damn right falling over.
Nothing in our house is actually square. Learn quick it’s old houses. Our bedroom wall wasn’t plumb so the carpenter had to do some adjusting to get the door to slide properly.
The pocket door still sticks a little bit nowadays if it’s been particularly humid (aka if you’ve spent any length of time in the bathroom) but it’s nothing too dramatic. It just needs a bit more wiggling than normal to pull it along. I also learned that you need to know what’s inside your walls before you start cutting huge holes in them.
One of our bedroom walls had electrical wires running through it in pretty much the exact spot the pocket door needed to slide. Cue another £200 for the electrician to come and move them. I remember telling Danny’s mum about pocket doors when we were helping her renovate her ensuite last summer.
Unfortunately she too lived in a Victorian terrace, only her walls were way too thin to have any sort of cavity. Plus there were heating pipes running through them too. That’s when I learned about barn doors.
Donned’TrendyAF until about 200 years ago but extremely useful. Her ensuite was also one of those skinny square rooms with an annoying angle cutting into the corner. The door that was there flooded into the toilet everytime someone opened it so a bathroom remodel was very needed.
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Barn doors slide along a track that’s mounted on top of your wall rather than inside it. This means there’s no need for a cavity big enough to fit a doorframe inside, so no worrying about pipes or wires. We found a reclaimed wood style door at our local timber yard which retailed at £180, got the track from Screwfix for about £120, then Danny’s brother installed it over a weekend.
Fun fact – barn doors aren’t sealed around the edges like a regular door would be. They lift off the track slightly when you open them, which means there’s always going to be a gap where sound and light can escape. Perfect for an ensuite that nobody else will see!
But not so much if it’s your main bathroom that your landlords drunk nephew is always in. Trust me. Learn from my mistakes.
Which is probably why I went the full monty with glazed doors when we renovated the bathroom in our rental flat in Beeston. It was a teeny studio flat so space was at a premium, but we still needed our tenants to feel like they’d got privacy. There are some awesome opaque glass panels on the market now that slide along a ridiculously smooth tracking system.
They look super modern too and allow light to pass through but nobody can see you sprinting around the bathroom with your toothbrush half naked. About £350 all in and they’ve lasted two house rentals and multiple tenants with no problems. The most important thing with any sliding door is to not skimp on the track it runs along.
Learn from myself and DON’T buy the cheapest budget option from eBay. Took me about 6 months of trying to wrestle that door open and close until I decided to rip it out and replace it with a *much more expensive* heavy duty track. Wouldn’t recommend… My new found obsession when houses have criminally small bathrooms are bi-fold doors.
Like pocket doors they save heaps of space because they only need half the clearance to open compared to traditional doors. They fold themselves in half as you open them so work fantastically in tiny spaces like under stairs bathrooms and cloakrooms. The hinge mechanism does require a little TLC from time to time – you’ll need to realign the hinges every so often – but overall they’re brilliant.
One quick lesson I learned when hanging my new door. SIDE OF THE DOOR DOES MATTER PEOPLE. Whoever had previously lived in our house must have known how stupid the door position was because when we first moved in I just assumedside hinged door out and didn’t think twice about it.
Whoops. The door swung into the shower area which meant every time anyone got out of the shower they had to close the door before they could use the other side of the bathroom. Took me ages to finally admit my mistake and get Danny to help me take the door off and rehang it the correct way.
SUCH a difference. Traditional Hinged Door – Ok, so if your bathroom has enough room AND enough wall clearance then go for it. They seal nicely when closed, obviously provide 100% privacy and you can get them in literally hundreds of different styles.
Measuring the swing of the door when it opens is essential. Don’t want to make the same mistake as me! Privacy – Depends on the type of door you go for.
Pocket doors are amazing as long as you get them fitted with seals around the edges.
Barn doors.. not so much. Glass doors depend how see-through your glass is.
Those funky frosted glass panels look AMAZING when the sun is shining but switch on your bathroom light at night and people can still see shadows. Discovered this at a dinner party once. Oops.
Price – Dependant on how much work needs doing. If you’re just replacing an existing door and you’re pretty handy with a screwdriver then you could probably knock up a new door for as little as £150-200. Pocket doors are pricey because you’ll likely need to pay someone to come and modify your walls.
Add in the price of a new door and you’re easily looking at £800-1,000 all in. Installation can also require replumbing/fittings or even electrical work if you’ve got wires running where you need your new door to hang. Measure Twice… Buy Door Once.
Pretty sure that should be the carpenters creed because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve ordered the wrong size door.
