pocket door kitchen pantry

yay or nay?

its hard for me to describe my kitchen so im including pictures - this is not my kitchen but the layout is similar. we have an L shape kitchen with an island that is going to have 3 bar stools
looking at the kitchen below, on the left of the island we have approximately 6 feet of empty space - its just a walkway leading through to the dining room/living room area

i am debating on adding a pantry with pocket doors to that wall giving us a more narrow walkway (considering a 24inch pantry closet giving us 4 feet of walkway). i am envisioning a look similar to the photo below

good idea? bad idea? any other suggestions for the space? just leave it open?

we are hoping our contractor will complete the kitchen and let us decide on adding the wall/pantry last but not sure he is going to be able to bc it may be double the work to put up support beams etc after the flooring is done

looking for all and any feedback or advice
we would hate to add it and then realize the walkway we left is too narrow

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Message edited 1/28/2014 1:29:43 PM.

pocket door kitchen pantry

I may not be understanding correctly but I would think you could use bi-fold doors and it would a lot less work/money.
Pantry doors typically aren't left open for extended periods of time and so using a bi-fold really wouldn't be that bad.
A four foot walkway is still a significant amount of space and I don't think that would be too narrow.

Re: pocket door kitchen pantry

Re: pocket door kitchen pantry

Posted by jams92

Posted by ISpoilHim

I may not be understanding correctly but I would think you could use bi-fold doors and it would a lot less work/money.
Pantry doors typically aren't left open for extended periods of time and so using a bi-fold really wouldn't be that bad.
A four foot walkway is still a significant amount of space and I don't think that would be too narrow.

my original plan was bi-fold doors
DH wasnt on board with them
but when we price it out maybe that will sway him

pocket door kitchen pantry

Also with doing a pocket door, you are going to loose more than 24 inches for the framing of the pocket.

Re: pocket door kitchen pantry

If you have a 6' opening, and want to allocate 2' of that to closet space, that means you need space for the door, and the framing. If the door slides into the wall that was there before the closet goes in, you're still taking up at least another 6", so your opening will only be 3.5'.
You would basically be making that large passthrough into a standard doorway.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, just something to keep in mind. Pantries are great, but I might look into another way of putting it in.

The wall that the pocket door goes into has to be rebuilt from scratch to accommodate the door inside the wall, so you don't want to leave that decision until the very end.