What Is a Recessed Door?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Steve Anthony, I'm a handyman here in New York City. What is a recessed door? Recessed door is another word for pocket door and basically all it is is a sliding door inside a wall. It can be a real boon to a new construction or even an existing home that you can modify. If you're a homeowner or remodeler and you have a home that you're considering putting a recessed door in, you find that if you use recessed doors in the right areas you can free up to maybe 10 square feet of area in a room. So they can be very effective in a lot of ways. It's really easy if you're starting with a home that is being built because you can design the track into the wall before you've ever actually put the wall up. Now if you want to put a pocket door or a recessed door into an existing home, it's going to take a little bit more work. You could do it yourself but maybe it might not be a bad idea to talk to a licensed contractor, have him come out at least give you an estimate on what it will take because the walls that are existing will have to come out, at least take the drywall down and you'll have to install a track that the door will slide on and disappear into the existing wall. You have to make sure, do your homework, make sure there's no electrical lines or water mains that are going through that wall before you start taking your hammer and knocking down some plaster. That's an expensive lesson to learn after the fact. But you can certainly do it yourself and if you're handy with the drywall after you've installed the pocket door, recessed door, you just patch the area that you knocked out and give it a coat of paint and you're good to go. There's a couple of different types of recessed door. You can either have one that retreats right into a wall or two that meet together in the center of a doorway and either way you're going to free up a lot of floor space and it's a good look."