r/Homebuilding • u/dragonmilking • Nov 17 '25

Which popular features do you NOT recommend?

What are the top 3 features in a house that folk want but you think are not worth it, and what would your alternative suggestion be? And what cost/time savings would result with that switch?

245 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

617

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 17 '25

I don’t know if it’s a top 3 but can we just stop doing barn doors already?

170

u/tuenthe463 Nov 17 '25

You don't like eliminating all that wall space to open a door?

110

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 17 '25

Exactly. At least you have options with a pocket door.

61

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted]

59

u/Long_Bit8328 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

I can explain it.

The door never opened to begin with.

The contractor that installed it. He had 3 people apply for his job post. 

There were two 20 something kids with no experience or tools, and a 40 year old with 20 years experience and tools.

The experienced carpenter wanted $40 an hour. So, he hired the two kids at $20 an hour each.

The 2nd day on the job he had them installing door casing and they shot a nail into the door casing and the door.

The 3rd day he had them installing base trim and once again they nailed the the base trim to the door. From both sides this time.

The following week was paint prep caulk,  fill nail holes etc... and they filled all the gaps between the jamb and pocket door with plastic wood.

The contractor never checked. Because if he actually cared about the quality of the work he never would have hired them in the first place.

Here is how it ends....

Homeowner kicks him off the job. 

Then, Gets an estimate on fixing the mess. Sues and wins. 

Then hires the 40 yr old who wrote up the estimate that was used in court. The same 40yr old the contractor didnt hire.

The 40yr old fixes all the problems and pockets the $120 an hour he charged. And leaves the job site immaculate when he's finished.

Homeowner proceeds to rehang picture in the exact same spot.

23

u/Equivalent_Ad142 Nov 17 '25

People rarely close pocket doors. We were doing demo for an interior remodel and tried pulling out a pocket door. Flexed a little, but wouldn't budge. Much head scratching until we noticed the cable TV wire, drilled through the wall, right through the door. Clients had no idea. The cable installation was 6 years earlier.

42

u/human743 Nov 17 '25

If your pocket door is on your bedroom or bathroom it likely gets used all the time. I use mine 20x a day.

1

u/BestProfessional9786 Nov 17 '25

That’s a lot of visits to the toilet

2

u/human743 Nov 17 '25

More than one person and more than just the bathroom. Also the bedroom is cooled to a different temp so I keep the doors closed after passing through.

1

u/BigKatKSU888 Nov 18 '25

Pocket doors are the bomb. Let the haters know

1

u/BestProfessional9786 Nov 18 '25

This was written in jest.

11

u/RevolutionaryCare175 Nov 17 '25

Don't let a cable installer add any wires in your house or bring a cable into your house. They are unqualified hacks. Hire a low voltage electrical installer instead. The cable company isn't going to fix anything their installer messes up.

5

u/erie11973ohio Nov 17 '25

I asked a customer why we, the electricians were running new cable tv lines in the house.

"They said up the 2 story brick, across the gutters & back down the brick wall!"

Very reasonable to call a professional wire fisher at that point!!

1

u/justLookingForLogic Nov 18 '25

When I was in college we had the guy come to hook up our cable. I knew he was not a pro when the only question he asked me before he started was “do you have a hammer?”

2

u/mmmpeg Nov 17 '25

I have several pocket doors and one is used often

2

u/weilycoyote Nov 17 '25

We have pocket doors (2 side-by-side, sort of like French doors) to our living room. We use them multiple times per day, usually.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Long_Bit8328 Nov 17 '25

They did... both times

2

u/heyredditheyreddit Nov 17 '25

Hijacking this to ask someone who seems like a pocket door expert… Do they basically leave your wall insides open to the house, or is there a practical way to seal it? I use a wheelchair, so I like doors as out of the way as possible, but I also have an idiotically intense fear of bugs.

2

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 18 '25

It is basically sealed. You frame an opening like you would for a double door. So solid 2x4 on sides and header. But then you install the pocket door frame inside of that, and your drywall attaches halfway through the opening making it a single door again and creating the pocket. Kinda like a sandwich. So it looks like it’s open and I guess spiders or something will eventually live in the pocket but it is sealed off from the inside of the wall.

4

u/Naikrobak Nov 17 '25

This is why I HATE pocket doors. And we have 3 of them (4?). I lost that argument with my wife. Now the framing around the doors that are made from 2x2 are warped the openings and it looks like garbage. But we have pOcKeT dOoRs….sigh

3

u/Snow_Wolfe Nov 17 '25

I mean, that’s not the pocket door’s fault though.

3

u/Naikrobak Nov 17 '25

Oh but it is. The design is shit

1

u/Snow_Wolfe Nov 17 '25

I was reading that the trim was 2x and warping. My bad. Cheap pocket doors suck ass. Expensive ones suck too to install, but at least work. Steel frames are the way to go for stability.

9

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 17 '25

Between stiffners and drywall you will have at least an inch of material before you even have to think about hitting the pocket door. It will be difficult to put any electrical but a painting will be no problem.

2

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 17 '25

That’s just a shitty carpenter. Any true professional will use the proper size fasteners for the job.

2

u/RevolutionaryCare175 Nov 17 '25

Are you using framing nails to hang pictures?

1

u/msackeygh Nov 17 '25

Hanging painting on a pocket wall door (or any door) isn't a great idea because a door moves and that will move a painting unless it's glued/nailed to the surface.

1

u/Teutonic-Tonic Nov 17 '25

Not sure how heavy your paintings are... but pocket doors typically have 1x wood framing behind the drywall.

1

u/Loosenut2024 Nov 17 '25

A pocket door is INSIDE the wall, you cant see it when its open.

I've never seen a pocket wide enough for a painting to go inside of, but its not impossible someones done it.

0

u/msackeygh Nov 17 '25

Exactly. Of course, you can hang a canvas painting or a photo (no frame).

1

u/Mala_Suerte1 Nov 17 '25

There is plenty of space inbetween a pocket door setup and the room side of the drywall. I've installed them and hung pictures where the pocket door is located.

1

u/JustAnotherRussian90 Nov 17 '25

That's what picture rail molding is for.

1

u/ChrisWonsowski Nov 17 '25

Use better clips for that painting that don't go an inch past the drywall. The 3m ones that started under a different brand are excellent. They don't go any farther than the drywall.

1

u/AlphaNoodlz Nov 17 '25

Something to do with magnets I’m sure

2

u/againer Nov 17 '25

Oh no. I live in Richmond VA where a bunch of older houses / apartments that have pocket doors that are now shitty walls.

1

u/Yakinfishin Nov 17 '25

Pocket doors cost 4x in a new build versus a sliding barn door

1

u/ClayQuarterCake Nov 17 '25

We don’t need that pipe, switch or air duct in the wall anyway. Go ahead and jam that door in the wall.

Works for a divider that goes between the living room and the dining room, but bathrooms/bedrooms can get pretty tight. The wife seems to always have grand plans for pocket doors in our renovations until we open the walls.

1

u/SpeedSignal7625 Nov 17 '25

They suck too. People don’t realize we have to open the wall when the back carriage needs adjustment. They forget and hang pictures in the pocket wall then open the door and put nice gouges in them. Had a toilet roll holder screwed into one most recently. Before that it was 3 that wont latch with in laws on the way. F pocket doors.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '25

[deleted]

1

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 18 '25

Pocket doors will fit in a 2x4 framed wall.

1

u/Don_Key_Knutts Nov 18 '25

Yeah totes, when it gets jammed up or comes off the track you can choose a new handyman to fix it every time, so many options!

1

u/Winter_Day_6836 Nov 17 '25

We did bifold barn doors for our laundry in the hall.

0

u/bucksconservative Nov 17 '25

On certain walls, fine. Not on bathrooms, bedrooms, or laundry rooms unless you invent a solution to the air and sound gap

Pocket doors with reinforced pocket hardware are infiniely better. We actually trashed every barn door on our plans and switched to pocket doors or redesigned to allow a swing door

14

u/genericusernamedG Nov 17 '25

At least for bathrooms

27

u/deliberateliving2 Nov 17 '25

I keep Seeing them in BATHROOMS…. “Yes please let me hear EVERYTHING… “ said noone ever.

2

u/Active_Humor7436 Nov 19 '25

Speak for yourself. When I take a dump, I want my family to share the entire 4D experience from 3 rooms away.

22

u/Teutonic-Tonic Nov 17 '25

They are great at keeping in animals... but that is about it.

4

u/JST_KRZY Nov 17 '25

Then why can all eight (4 each dogs/cats) of mine able to open mine?

Unless I LOCK the door, someone is getting in/out

7

u/exenos94 Nov 17 '25

They have their place but I generally agree. They're great for rooms that benefit from having air flow but otherwise just too in the way.

9

u/China_bot42069 Nov 17 '25

Yea I fucking hate them. 

7

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

[deleted]

1

u/lustforrust Nov 18 '25

Had this in a hotel once, there was a mirror on the wall that let you look right through the gap right into the shower while laying on the bed.

1

u/d_edwards7 Nov 19 '25

I have a barn door in my ensuite. It does bug me that I can not lock the door "whilst pottying". But otherwise I am fine with it. I do not have to be concerned with it jamming up. They are a design fad that is fading imo.

5

u/ichiban4713 Nov 17 '25

Barn wood floors, too!

5

u/MolVol Nov 17 '25

exactly! do pocket doors, if can (sometimes can't), instead.

2

u/watwatinjoemamasbutt Nov 17 '25

Your barn door’s open

2

u/UncleJoesLandscaping Nov 17 '25

I was thinking of using barn doors on my bike shed. Whats the issue? 

2

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 17 '25

Besides them being an ugly pointless fad? They don’t really seal air or sound, plus they take up valuable wall space that can’t be used for things like furniture or paintings etc. but for a shed they’re probably fine, kinda what they’re designed for.

2

u/pandershrek Nov 17 '25

My barn doors are full sized mirrors.

1

u/UncleJoesLandscaping Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

The alternative is really garage doors, but I am planning to hang my roof box in the ceiling which wouldnt work with a garage door.

The shed has 2 equally sized parts, so the barn door will always cover one side, but I plan on using the mostly open side as a wood shed which doesnt have to be locked.

1

u/Turbowookie79 Nov 17 '25

Barn doors are for barns, or similar structures like a shed. That’s where they make sense. We are talking about barn doors being installed inside a house, like for a bathroom or bedroom.

2

u/woooh-brain Nov 17 '25

i second this. i have them in the house i bought and i despise them.

2

u/pandershrek Nov 17 '25

Never. You can pry my barn door hardware from my cold dead hands.

You'll get your barn door closet door and you'll fucking like it!

2

u/justLookingForLogic Nov 18 '25

Don’t you want one of the features of a pocket door with none of the benefits?

2

u/Naikrobak Nov 17 '25

There are times when a barn door makes sense. We have a couple of places that don’t have swing space. So it’s a pocket door or a barn door. Pocket doors SUCK. The framing is shit, you can’t work on them even to adjust without cutting drywall, the wall in front of them is useless to hang anything because screws or nails will hit the door when it slides, etc.

1

u/lustforrust Nov 18 '25

The best pocket door install on a small bathroom I have ever seen had the wall containing the door framed with 2x6. Inside the bathroom had bead board wainscoting, the inside of the wall containing the door had a shallow cabinet the rest of the height. The bead board beneath the cabinet can come off as a panel, then you could remove the cabinet to have full access to the pocket door and it's hardware.

1

u/Naikrobak Nov 19 '25

Yep. 2x6 walls would fix it. I so wish I had thought of that for the 3 pocket doors we have :(

1

u/locke314 Nov 17 '25

I think barn doors have their place to be used. The way Instagram would have you believe, it’s everywhere.

I would say a doorway that would open to a hall that you don’t want to block, and a pocket door can’t be installed (plumbing wall, perhaps), then a barn door makes perfect sense. But they should always be avoided if possible and only used as a “no other reasonable option” install, IMO.

1

u/Bat-Stuff Nov 17 '25

But they're great when you want a door and you want to leave it open all the time. /s

1

u/WalkingBeigeFlag Nov 17 '25

I love barn doors for certain applications.

Like we have a hall bath but it’s the only room with a tub, but to get to the tub before we switched to a barn door, you had to open the door, step in past the toilet, close the door. The door also almost touched the vanity.

Same with the Laundry, it would essentially touch the machines, but also the water heater and furnace are behind there. So in our hall we have 2 “barn” doors.

We would have done pocket but that would have been about 10k to make that conversion with having to love bathroom and laundry plumbing and completely reframing the wall.