Retrofit a Standard Door into a Pocket Door

May 30, 2023

Design
DIY

A 9-5'er turned DIY content creator. When I'm not tearing down walls and ripping up carpets, you can find me designing and building furniture, watching Marvel movies for the 100th time, and cuddling my goofy Australian Shepherd, Tokyo. 
I love learning new skills and obsessing over new hobbies that last a week and hosting dinner parties.

Hi, I'm Maggie

I get a thrill out of being able to reuse and repurpose existing materials. The world of renovations produces a lot of waste, in an effort to be more sustainable, I try to reuse as many things as possible. For example – my standard interior doors! For my primary suite remodel, we are taking both of our bathroom and closet doors, and retrofitting them into pocket door! I wasn’t sure it was possible but I was able to convert them, so let show you how to retrofit a standard door into a pocket door.

Materials

  • Bondo
  • Spread
  • Spade Bit
  • Pocket Door Hardware

Tools

  • Jigsaw
  • Power Drill
  • Chisel
  • Hammer
  • Sander
  • Router

Instructions

Step 1 – Prep the Door

These hallow slab interiors door have seen alot, so I removed the hardware and give them a nice light sand to remove and old paint drips and gunk. I propped the door on a set of saw horse to save my back and used a 220 grit sand paper with an electric orbital sander to smoothen the surface. You can sand it manually, but the electric sander made it much quicker.

Once the doors were cleaned, I traced on the hardware template. When you purchase a pocket door hardware, it comes with a template that is true to size. (if you lost it, don’t worry, they almost always publish it online – like this for example) There might be better methods to transferring the template onto the door, but I used a pen to trace the template and applied enough pressure to make an indentation on the surface. Then I traced along the indentation again on the actual door.

Step 2 – Patch and Fill with Bondo

Next I needed to fill in some areas of void. You can see from the image above that there are some areas where the pocket door hardware will not cover the gaps. What to do?!? I sat on this for a few weeks thinking of the best way to approach this since the gap is so small but more importantly, it was curved! Which means it can’t just stick some scrap pieces of wood in there, I would need to carve out a round piece. I decide it was easier to add a block of wood then to try to make a semi circle, so using my jigsaw, I cut a square where the door handle used to be. I cut a piece of 2×4 into a cube that fit perfectly in that space, and then used some wood glue to secure it into place.

For the edge of the door, I again used a scrap piece of wood, cut it to size and then used wood glue and nails to secure it into place.

Using Bondo, I filled in all the weird gaps and cracks. Bondo is a professional grade putty used to fill gaps. The Pros – quick cure time, very durable, the Cons – odor, quick cure time. The trick is to mix a little amount of bondo, then do multiple thin layers of bondo. Mix, apply, sand, mix apply sand. I would aim for 3 thin layers, it’s like applying joint compound, with each layer, you spread it a little wide to flatten it out. Once I was happy with the results, I sanded the area with 220 grit, and this is how it came out!

Step 3 – Create Cavity

Now onto the fun part. Professional carpenters have the right tools to make a cavity for a pocket door. But we are DIY’ers and don’t have access to that. I purchased a spade bit that was just as thick as the mortise body. Based on my instructions the body is 11/16″ thick. I purchased a 11/16″ spade bit, attached it to my power dill, and went to town. I made as many hole as possible until I could no longer use the power drill. To make sure I didn’t drill too far, I wrapped a strip of painter’s tape on the bit indicating where I should stop.

Then I used the router with a straight bit again to remove the the rest of the wood, but the router bit only goes so far!

So finally, I used a hammer and chisel to remove the rest of the wood. Eventually I was able to make the cavity big enough to fit the mortise body.

The last step is to route the front and back of the door for the face plate! I used a router with a straight bit to remove the excess material from the front and back of the door. This part was pretty smooth, it doesn’t need to be perfect because the face plat will cover the edges. The hole just needs to be big enough for the back of the face plate to fit.

Step 4 – Install Hardware!

After I got all the door cleaned and painted, I installed my pocket door hardware. I have installed a number of pocket door hardware but haven’t loved them enough to use it again. While searching for the perfect one, I stumbled across the Emtek Oval Pocket Door set and loved the simplicity of it, I reached out to them to see if they would like to partner on this project. I was thrilled when they responded yes! This pocket door set is gifted from Emtek and I can confidently say its the easiest pocket door hardware I’ve installed even with my limited amount of tools! I got the finish in Satin Brass to match some of my bathroom hardware.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Related Posts: ORC Week 1 Kick-off, Primary Suite Progress, Moody Modern Bedroom Reveal

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