From bedroom to home office: what a sliding door really costs
Turning a room into a home office costs between €115 and €1,000. A guide to the options, prices and the drawbacks of sliding doors.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
From bedroom to home office: the sliding door isn't always the answer
Turning a small room into a home office runs into a silly obstacle: the door. When it opens inwards, it eats up a third of the usable space. A sliding door seems like the obvious solution, but it's not always as simple or as cheap as people assume.
What switching to a sliding door involves
The cheapest option is to reuse the existing door: remove the trim, install a top rail and a roller kit. The result leaves a half-centimetre gap that can be disguised with a strip, but it's not airtight: noise and heat escape. If you're not much of a DIYer, the sensible thing is to hire a carpenter.
Costs: from €115 to €1,000
A basic kit for plasterboard costs €115. A pocket door built into the wall —the famous recessed casing—, an aesthetically flawless option, costs far more: a few years ago it was around €700 and is now estimated at between €900 and €1,000, not counting the work of demolishing a metre of wall, redoing the wiring, plastering and painting.
Alternatives that don't involve building work
Reversing the way the door opens or simply hanging curtains are the emergency options. That said, anyone looking for a decent finish rather than a botched job will have to dig deep: a properly installed sliding door is not a bargain-bin product.
In the end, the decision depends on the wall, the budget and how much you want the office not to look like a rented room with curtains. And there, every case is different.
Turning a small room into a home office runs into a silly obstacle: the door. When it opens inwards, it eats up a third of the usable space. A sliding door seems like the obvious solution, but it's not always as simple or as cheap as people assume.
What switching to a sliding door involves
The cheapest option is to reuse the existing door: remove the trim, install a top rail and a roller kit. The result leaves a half-centimetre gap that can be disguised with a strip, but it's not airtight: noise and heat escape. If you're not much of a DIYer, the sensible thing is to hire a carpenter.
Costs: from €115 to €1,000
A basic kit for plasterboard costs €115. A pocket door built into the wall —the famous recessed casing—, an aesthetically flawless option, costs far more: a few years ago it was around €700 and is now estimated at between €900 and €1,000, not counting the work of demolishing a metre of wall, redoing the wiring, plastering and painting.
Alternatives that don't involve building work
Reversing the way the door opens or simply hanging curtains are the emergency options. That said, anyone looking for a decent finish rather than a botched job will have to dig deep: a properly installed sliding door is not a bargain-bin product.
In the end, the decision depends on the wall, the budget and how much you want the office not to look like a rented room with curtains. And there, every case is different.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (26 replies).
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