This one was my wife’s request. Our bathroom opened directly into our bedroom with nothing to close, so on mornings when she was up before me she went and got ready in the second bathroom instead.

The fix was to extend the wall a few feet, turn a corner, and hang a door.

It also solved a second problem. With a door at the entrance, we could take down the door between the sinks and the toilet and shower — that room was tight already, and the swing was in the way.

Framing

I extended the existing partition between the bedroom and the bathroom by a few feet, framed a corner, and framed in the door with a box above it. King studs, jack studs, the works.

Everything went together with structural screws, because I do not own a nail gun.

Before the plate went down I pulled up the flooring underneath the run of the new wall, so it lands on the subfloor rather than floating on top of the floor. The plate is screwed and glued with construction adhesive.

The floor marked out with tape, flooring cut away along the line of the new wall

Marking out and cutting the flooring away for the bottom plate

The new wall framed and standing, looking through into the bathroom

Framing up, looking through into the bathroom

Hanging the door

This was the hard part, and most of the difficulty was my own doing — I had not thought the sequence through before I started.

The order that works:

  1. Shim the hinge side until it is level, and only the hinge side.
  2. Install the frame.
  3. Shim the jamb side to set the reveal.

I tried to do all three at once, which means every adjustment undoes another one.

The door being offered up to the opening

Fitting the door

The door hung in the frame, with the framed box above it

Hung, with the box framed in above

Spray foam around the door jamb from the bathroom side

Foamed from the bathroom side

The door on its hinges, swinging clear

Swinging clear

Insulation, drywall and texture

Insulation went into the wall and the box above the door, both for sound.

Insulation in the framing above the door

Insulation in, mostly for sound

Us mid-build, in front of the framed opening

Mid-build

Drywall going up on the bedroom side

Drywall on the bedroom side

Drywall on the bathroom side, around the new door

And the bathroom side

The door with its handle installed

Hardware on

Then mud, and texture to match the rest of the upstairs — which someone hand-textured with a sponge or a rag, so matching it meant doing the same.

Mudding in progress, old paint still showing through

Mudding and blending into the existing wall

The blended wall before paint

Blended and ready for primer

The finished textured wall

Textured to match

The wall is primed and waiting on the bedroom being repainted.

Where it landed

The door closes properly and stays where you put it — it does not drift open or swing shut on its own. Between the insulation in the wall and a solid core door, the sound separation is good.

The door trim, and the new trim throughout the bathroom, came out well.

The trimmed doorway seen from the bedroom, looking through into the bathroom

The trimmed door from the bedroom side

The same doorway from inside the bathroom, door open onto the bedroom

And from inside the bathroom, looking back out

The bathroom is now sage green.

The finished bathroom

Finished, in sage green

What I would do differently

Rip the drywall off the faces I was extending. I framed against the existing wall faces without stripping them first. Structurally that is fine, but it made the mudding much harder: the existing corners sat proud of the extended faces, and I tried to fill the difference with all-purpose mud. I did not know about hot mud at the time. It worked in the end, but it was more work than it needed to be, and in raking light you can still see where the transition is.

Do not saw-cut the floor through the doorway. I was focused on getting the flooring out from under the bottom plate and forgot there is no bottom plate across a doorway. There is an oak threshold over it now and it looks fine, but I know what is underneath.