When Pocket Doors Go Rogue....

Who knew these little wheels could cause such a commotion for so long?

Our house, built in 1963, has a lot of things going for it:  sturdy construction, character, beautiful yard, (now a new roof).  But with that 1963 construction date come a lot of quirks. Lots and lots of doors in this house and two of them are pocket doors.

One that protects a very private and necessary room.  

Our "master" bathroom.  Did I mention small "master" bathroom when I talked about quirks? 

 You can see for yourself the spaciousness that is shared by not only two good sized adults, but by one Bumby the cat. (Much to Mr. Tennis' chagrin). And this brings me to a pet peeve about the lucky people looking for houses on "House Hunters". A master bath with two sinks is not a necessity, it is a LUXURY! 

Every once in awhile our bathroom pocket friend would jump the tracks and it would take a great deal of noisy wrestling (bad words included) to get it back "on track".

Finally the door one day in December, no it was November, said "enough" and simply spit off one of it's wheels.

Being the handy people we are in the home repair area, we called our friend John.  He can do anything!  

It's not like we didn't make an effort ourselves, but even the people at Home Depot couldn't tell us how you replace a pocket door.  One guy did mumble something about having to rip the wall apart.

JOHN!!!!

John came and took a look.  Popped the molding off and pulled the door out. "Rip the wall out" didn't come into play thank goodness.  But those wheels did.

No local hardware stores had such things.  "Special order" was talked about and we waited for the new wheel (cost $1) to be shipped from California. Whaaat? I could have had The Writer and Sammy just bring it with them when they came for Christmas.

It arrived.

John attached it to the door, which while waiting for said wheel to come in, he had spruced up with a new handle-thing and babied the wood a bit.

"It doesn't fit the track", said John one week before Christmas when the house would be full of lots of people.   

Apparently in 1963 pocket door wheels were smaller (like the bathrooms) and since the new wheel came from CA we (John and I) figured no smaller wheel existed. He even looked for a used one.

Mr. Tennis would have to continue (and yes, me too) to shower and do bathroom things behind the curtain until John could come back and go with Plan B:  remove closet pocket door, put the wheel off of that door onto nicer looking (now) bathroom door and then close up pocket area in closet and put some sort of bi-fold door there.

Well, Christmas came and went, roofers came and created chaos and we went to California for a vacation (where the wheel came from).  John and I played telephone tag for a week and finally he came TODAY!

It's done! 

 He did it! 

Pay no attention to the person in orange taking the picture

 - I have NO idea who she is (look at that hair!  Has she no shame?)

With old 1963 wheels! Mr. T can rejoice (in private now).

And I get to see John again when he figures out the door situation for the closet (and yes, I have not cleaned out the closet since my shameful post about it.)

I think I will surprise John and do that before he comes back.

Gotta go.