We are nearing the end of our bathroom renovation–just waiting on a few final touches, lights and the glass for the shower enclosure and we can move in! (Truth: I did move some hand soap in so we could stop walking out of our room if we needed to use the restroom and I still do half the time. Habit.) We added two different pocket doors to our bathroom last week and I love a pocket door (we added two others to our kitchen/dining area–read about those here), but for these, we added special soft close hardware that a reader clued us in about, and I’m here to tell you, it’s life changing! Every pocket door needs a soft close.

To add the doors, we used Johnson pocket door frames, in 24×80 and 36×80 sizes. Due to the size of the soft close hardware, our 24in door (that’s the one that leads into the water closet) would only allow the soft close function on one direction (slows down when we open the door, or slows down when we close it). We went with slow down upon closing the door, and we love it. The 36in door was wide enough to add the hardware both directions, so it closes and opens softly.

For the pocket door leading into the bathroom, the wall is thicker on the bathroom side than it is on the bedroom side. This was done to both allow room for the shower head plumbing while keeping the door functional, and to add stability to the wall for when tile was added. Pocket door frames have a little give in them if you push their walls, which would crack the tiles and cause them to pop off. Adding 2x4s (set flat, so only 1.5in was added to the thickness of the shower wall) will keep that from happening.

For the door between the bathroom and our bedroom, we went with a 36in version of the pocket doors in our great room, and stained it with the same English Chestnut finish (followed up with a few coats of Polycrylic to seal it). We wanted the water closet (where the toilet is) to be a little more private, so opted out of the window in the door and went with a primed, 1 panel Shaker-style door. Since the surface of the door was so smooth, we used a foam roller to give it two coats of Benjamin Moore Super White in semi-gloss.

Our contractor, Scott, used a router to carve out holes for one flush pull handle on each side of the doors, and an edge pull handle as well. We went with a brass finish, which matches the knobs on our vanity perfectly.

If you follow me on Instagram Stories, you know we added a chic plaque to the white pocket door (this prive one!)  yesterday, it was too late to add a photo to the post, but I love the cheeky touch. While we still have a few things remaining, we are just so excited that we’re able to start using little parts of the bathroom here and there. And putting in a little extra time, money and effort for things like making our doors soft close, is really turning this bathroom into something special.