How to fix stuck pocket doors?

Question

I moved into a house with a number of sliding doors. NOT external, sliding glass doors like the sort that lead onto a porch. These are the wooden kind that separate rooms and slide into the interior of the wall when opened.

The problem is that several of these doors are essentially broken. They seem to have come off their track somehow and can barely be moved more than a foot in either direction. No amount of jarring and shaking the door has produced any effect in getting back on the track properly.

Without tearing the entire wall open, is there any way to repair these doors so that they slide open and closed with silent ease, as they ought to?

Answer 1

This type of door is called a pocket door.

The first possibility is that the door has simply come off the track or the door has come unattached from the hanger that runs along the track. In that case you can figure out which side of the track it should be hung from and pick the door up and rehang it or attempt to fish the hanger out of the pocket and reattach it to the top of the door.

The more likely case, in my experience, is that the hardware is broken and will have to be replaced. Here is a good guide to replacing the hardware on a pocket door: http://www.ronhazelton.com/projects/how_to_repair_and_replace_a_pocket_door