I don't know the answer to your question but we just decided to move away from a barn door and into a pocket door for our family room ( which opens off the entry hall). Our doors are 8 ft tall so the opening will be apprx 8 x 6 ft. We wanted to put a transom window above to let in light, which we couldn't do with a barn door. The (glass) barn door may have produced more light reflection as the doors were open on either side - light thru the opening plus the reflection of the glass doors against the walls. We were not doing a custom door, which would have involved different issues (nonstandard door sizes). However, our GC said larger doors have more problems with warping or other problems, and repairs can require taking out the wall. Of course you also have to have room on the sides for the full door to close and the track mechanism to fit. Talk to a carpenter or a door installer who does custom work with large doors. If money is no object there are gorgeous doors out there...

Elphaba, I'm in Houston. We have completely gutted our "new" house and are in the process of rebuilding. Throughout the house, we have installed pockets for 4 pocket doors. One of those is in the master bath. I am really excited to be getting those doors out of the way. I can share my experience. We have 3 pocket doors in our office here, and we have not had any problems. The office is on a slab, and the thermostat is only kept at a comfortable level 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This means that it gets fairly humid in there on the weekends. The office pocket doors are rarely used, but when I do use them, they work just fine. They were installed about 3 years ago without any problems. It's true that it is humid outside, but I wouldn't think with central air that it would be any more humid than anyplace else on the inside of your house. Of course a bathroom is more humid than other rooms, but if your cabinet hardware isn't sticking or rusting, I would think that the pocket door would behave in the same way. At least that's what I'm hoping since we just installed 4!!! My vote is for the pocket door. Best of luck with your project! Enduring, that's great info on the pocket doors. Thank you for sharing. This post was edited by TXBluebonnet11 on Fri, Jun 21, 13 at 3:13

I'm confused. Of the 12'7" room width, how much will be wall and how much will be opening? If it's 100% open, then barn doors don't make sense in my mind, because they don't close the whole gap and thus don't "hide the mess." Plus a 5 foot door would be huge. I suppose you could do a shoji screen type deal, with 4 3' screens that all collapsed into 3' on one end. But then again, I may be misunderstanding your layout plans here.

The door slab can be used for the barn door, but you'll want to remove the hinges and patch/paint them. The knobs could be left on, but realize that they'll prevent the doors from opening the full width of the opening (may not matter to you). And you'll have the latch mechanism that will be extraneous. Here's a photo of a barn door setup we used between a bedroom and bath. We still had normal molding (casing and baseboard), so that wouldn't need to be removed. Your doors will just cover the opening (like they do now) without any overlap. Also, the door jamb will have mortises to full in (where hinges were), an extra piece of wood in the center of the door jamb (don't know the name) that doesn't exist for wall openings without doors. Those could be removed. As long as the above don't bother you, it can certainly be done.