How to Finish a Trimless Pocket Door

Installing a pocket door — a sliding door that, when opened, is tucked away into a hidden nook inside the wall — is going to be a difficult task under any circumstance, requiring a lot of very precise lines and cuts. And to install a trimless pocket door is like taking the safety net from that project. To put it mildly, a trimless pocket door is a challenge, one that the skillful remodelers at Refresh Home Improvements took on, with some help from Trim-Tex vinyl drywall corner bead during the finishing process.

Learn how the Tuer brothers from RHI achieved their elegant, totally trimless room with a pocket door, step-by-step, in the video below!

The Trimless Pocket Door Process

There are all kinds of pocket door kits you can buy that will work great here, but for this particular project, RHI's Dan and Steve Tuer picked up the FD80 Soft-Open / Soft-Close Pocket Door System by Sugatsune. Why? Its two-part track lets you easily remove it, even after all the drywall's been hung to hide it, and make small adjustments as needed. This would allow them to test the fit and maneuverability of the door while they still have easy access to it, and an easier time finishing the drywall without having the door in the way. Plus, its soft-closing mechanism will ensure no one slams the door behind them, protecting their perfectly finished drywall for a long time to come.

Meanwhile, to complete the totally trimless look in the room, they chose Trim-Tex Architectural Z Shadow Bead to line the bases of their walls, running along the bottom of the drywall surface to the floor, in lieu of baseboards. This has become a stylish look for many ultra-modern homes and offices in recent years — it's clean, sleek and makes a room look almost as though the drywall is suspended in midair an inch above the floor. 

To finish their trimless pocket door, the RHI guys chose Trim-Tex's Giant L Bead, whose extra-wide vinyl flanges could slide inside the opening of the door, both to provide protection from any bumps or scrapes and to prevent you from seeing any bare drywall on the inside. For the outside corners and the drywall covering the upper section of the track, they used a standard Trim-Tex Corner Bead, which safeguards the drywall and provides a smooth finish. Where necessary, they overlapped the two beads (not always recommended, but in this case, with such narrow partitions, it'll do the trick). Around the corners where two beads intersect, including at the Z Shadow Bead at the base of the wall, they snipped each bead's mud legs at a 45-degree angle for a continuous look all the way around.

Of course, as Steve Tuer points out in the video, your own trimless pocket door may have different specs that you'll need to finish. Take a look through the Trim-Tex catalog for the best beads to suit your needs — you'll find L Beads of all kinds of widths, as well as corner beads in all sorts of sizes and shapes, so we feel confident you'll find the perfect solution for your own pocket door.

The Toronto contractors made that choice of vinyl finishing accessories for two clever reasons: (1) the movement of that door opening and closing so many times over the years is going to cause a lot of stress and impact on the assembly, which would easily cause a metal corner bead to crack or dent — the rigid vinyl of our L Bead and Corner Bead will not — and (2), after the whole assembly is mudded, sanded and painted, you'll be left with a clean, trimless finish that will make it look like a sliding door somehow grew naturally out of that wall.

As you can see from the above video, Refresh Home Improvements walked away triumphant with this trimless pocket door project. And we couldn’t be more pleased to see our products playing a small role to help them do their best work. Going trimless may be more of a high-wire act than the more traditional approach, but the results speak for themselves — their pocket door installation looks fresh and sophisticated, while not calling too much attention to itself.

If you’re looking for more drywall-finishing tips like this, check out how RHI demonstrated three different ways to finish a drywall opening here. And to learn more about RHI and what they're doing around the Toronto area, check them out on Instagram here!