I looked into the nana wall and several other options as well --- They are really cool, but in the end, we determined that our house location and set up didn't warrant the expense of these. Now, if we had an awesome view, we might have done this. My recollection of this in terms of pricing for Nana Wall and some of the other brands: I believe it was about $800 a foot for this --- so for a 12' opening, it worked out to about $9600 --- I looked at several manufacturers and the pricing was all in that ballpark. Will your doors open to a patio, a screened porch? This was a concern for us in this decision. We ended up putting a screened porch, so the Nana concept would have been great, because opening the doors wide would still be within the screen.... thus no bugs, etc invading the house. If not, you might want to consider with lights on in the house and the doors wide open, you might get every moth in town visiting! Another consideration is how to stack the panels. In our plan it was working out to be awkward --- and the "stack" would have been in the way. Just make sure that if you go with these, you have that planned carefully... some of them can stack inside a wall, which is pretty neat. Another consideration to think about..... look back at your pictures linked.... the transition from inside to outside.... if you are trying to make a very open space, be careful of that little half step transition.... it looks like a tripping hazard to me. I would want either a full step down, or preferably a level transition there to open up the space. The top picture has a small step, which can be an ankle breaker! Finally, if you are trying to maximize your view through the house straight out the back, maybe consider an odd number of doors so the exact center is glass, not the door frames meeting in the middle (your bottom picture does this glass in the middle way). If you think about your set of 4 doors concept, the dead center part will be about 8" of door frame, vs. glass. If you use 3 or 5 panels, the center view would be glass. This is why in the first few pictures they show the doors open, because it looks way better open than closed. But in the last picture, the view is great regardless. And.... while I think the standard is to have the center 2 panels open on french doors, it makes furniture placement more difficult, so just make sure you've thought about it! Good luck would love to see pics of the view, etc! Rachel

Just thought I'd chime in with my lighting plan for the interior of my cabinets. I did LED pucks all around, dimmable. The controllers are mounted in the cabinet above my range hood, which of course is more or less useless given the 8" duct running through it. So I have regular 'Romex' 14/2 wire running from the 2 dimmer switches on my wall to the 2 controller units in that space. Then I ran Romex 14/2 wire and stubbed it out of the walls under each section of cabinets and above each section of cabinets. You can see it stubbed out of the walls in some of the pics. One dimmer controls the interior lighting, one the under cabinet lights. You can't run low voltage wire inside walls, so I roughed in standard 14/2 from the controller units above the range to each isolated section of lighting. The controllers send low voltage current across that full size wire, and then I pigtail on the low voltage wire/LED pucks. All of that wire is just strung from one hole to the other drilled through the cabinets and can be pulled out etc. The under cabinet lighting is all enclosed in light boxes mounted to the bottom of the cabinets - no exposed wiring. The 2 dimmers have to be designed for low voltage lighting - no big deal. But 'digital' dimmers tend to not work - you need the mechanical slider type. In each upper section of cabinet I installed a single puck, in the center. So it's more or less hidden behind the door stiles. In the all glass cabinets I put 2 pucks at the top and they have glass shelves. 19 lights in total. I also have 10 recessed lights in the ceiling, which almost never get used. I wanted LED's for the lack of heat. They're warm to the touch but you can put your hand over them and keep it there - just warm, not hot. 2 years in and the lights have been trouble free. in hindsight I would have skipped the whole dimmer business - we never use the dimmers - always just full on. If we entertained and wanted ambient lighting I suppose dimming them would be nice, but we don't do that often.

Well, I've had to reavaulate the pocket door situation. Going into the house yesterday I realized that the half bathroom will have to have a pocket door unless I want the door to swing out and eat up a wall that I need for something else. I thought I could swing it in, but one way would block the window and the other way which I thought was going to work will force the bathroom user to sit on the toilet in order to close the door. We're putting 36 inch doors throughout so they eat a great deal of space. I am also going to put one on our bathroom because there isn't a good resting spot for that door either, and in reality won't be closed much. We've ordered the extra heavy duty (for a 400 lb. door) Johnson pocket door hardware because it looks more reinforced. flgargoyle I am taking your suggestions about pinched fingers to heart and see if we can set something up to prevent that. We'll still have some swing doors, but the pocket doors do fix door issues at times. I don't really have an area in these instances where a barn door would work either. Sandy

What did you do? (Warning: Novel coming:) I am here to tell you that antique pocket door hardware is perfect, but 50s through early 90s hardware is AWFUL. Who ever thought a J channel would hold a door that gets a lot of use was an idiot. But not as big an idiot as anyone who installed it and walked away. It is ALL in the installation. I've put in 15 pocket doors using the Johnson Hardware's extruded tracks, with their 3-wheel system. No matter what the weight, I always use 3 rollers. Not only can I, a self-taught, dangerous DIYer, do it, but it's well balanced and beautiful. You don't need those giant pocket door kits, either. A 2x6 base plate, then 2x4s turned sideways down either side of the 2x6 makes the channel. The hardware goes on the top, add wheels, bumpers, trim and DONE. DONE I SAY! Your hardware fears are only valid if the same installation you're experiencing is used again, or the installation is too quick or faulty. I don't know what I'd do without the 9 extra square feet in my rooms. I've even used antique French doors (perfect for your dining room!?) in 3 of them. In the other doors, I'm using antique, horizontal 6-panel doors (harder to find than the 5-panel and cooler doors, I think) which are solid and beautiful. More interesting than any slab door. The only other tip I would suggest is to make certain they're exterior thickness, which is at least 1.75" thick. Interior doors these days are usually 1 3/8" thick and rather flimsy for a pocket. Today I'm installing the trim on the last of the French doors I'm using. It's an antique (i.e. also reclaimed) and just beautiful. Great sight line from the window in the mudroom, into the kitchen. Gives me more light than my dark kitchen than I'd had before. As you can see, I can't rave enough about my pockets. Don't let some contractor tell you they're too difficult or more expensive. Show them this DIYer's post and I'll help their pro-butts out. Remember, if this (nitwit) chick can do it, a pro should do it with their hammer tied behind their back.