I am adding a room addition to my house and I am trying to come up with an idea for a door to connect the new addition. The wall space I have available is about 5 feet wide and my big issue is that I do not want the door to open inwards into the existing room. If i don't have it swing that way, there will be a recess in the wall. This is because the new addition will have its own framing and the door would have to be installed on that frame in order to swing into the new space.

A pocket door would be nice, but I don't have enough room on either side of the opening for the door to slide into. One side is an exterior wall and the other side is a fireplace. I have seen tambour doors (like a roll top desk) but they all seem to roll up and down like a garage door and most are metal (designed as security devices).

Is anyone aware of a door that would slide sideways, but also bend around 90 degrees as it is opened? I can have the door move that direction into the new space and that would actually be ideal.

Any ideas on this dilemma?

thanks
Fred

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Only one and it's not that good. In one big house I worked on, we had something like 13 single pocket doors, 8 doubles, and one telescoping quadruple. Perhaps a telescoping double would do the trick. Not sure if it's available but I'll bet it could be fabricated. That way a 30" door opening, for example, would only need about a 16 or 17 inch cavity.

Pocket doors are sort of a PITA, but they do have their uses. And I'd go with at least 2x6 walls for any pocket door (2x4 setups are just too cheap and flimsy), and if this telescoping double were possible, probably need at least a 2x8.

**EDIT**

Just saying "telescoping quadruple" is a bit vague. There were two doors on each side of the opening, the first one you pulled out (on each side) had a sort of hook on the back that would grab the second one and pull it out with it, once the first one was out all the way. It was the same deal there -- not enough room to hide a simple double pocket door given the size of the opening, which was large -- I forget, about 8 or 9 feet.

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