Have you discussed these issues with your contractor? Are these openings new or were they original? It may be possible to move the door casing out at the bottom enough to make the door flush on the single door rather than trying to adjust the track. Sounds like something is not exactly square. Is the distance from the floor the same along the bottom of the door when it is closed? If so moving the jamb & trim may be about the only solution.

As for the short doors would it be possible to add a 3/4" piece to the back side of each door? It is either that or pull the jamb and trim in on each side about 3/4".

Perhaps the 3/4 piece could be a bit wider than the door to make it look like it was an intended trim piece to fill the opening when the doors are closed. Not sure if that will work as I don't know how much clearance you have between the door and framework. Also will adding the 3/4" allow the door to open flush with the jamb?

Just some thoughts.

Thanks for your comments, jrice. The double pocket doors are all new construction, and the frames themselves are all perfectly square. The problem with making the doors bigger is that then I have to make the pockets deeper, otherwise the doors will stick into the opening when opened, which I don't want. The only solution I see at this point is to make the opening smaller, presumably with trim, but my real question is, is this just how pocket doors are normally ordered and installed ("Get me a 48" prehung pocket door kit and two 24" doors to fit in it"), or is this something my contractor should have known would happen?

I haven't discussed this with him yet because I want to make sure I'm not raising a fuss about something that is perfectly normal in the construction world (even if it looks totally wrong to me).

-Joel

The finished opening for a pocket door is about 1/4 -1/2" smaller then the actual door. This way the door stays a little in the pocket for a better look. If you want the door flush with the frame when it is opened, add molding to the frame and an appropriately sized spacer on the back edge of the door to stop it where you want it.
I don't know what hardware you used for these double doors. I use Johnson's. They hang straight down due to gravity. You mention the openings are square. This does not impact the way the doors hang. Are the two sides plumb? This could be an issue depending on the door hardware and how the runners are connected to the door. You can check this easily, without a level. Look at the doors while they are in the pockets. Do the doors sit in the middle of the opening with equal space on both sides of the door. If not, the frame is probably not plumb.
Ron

We also just installed pocket doors, 3 pairs of french doors and 1 single. There is no gapping but I found that the doors wobbled slightly when opening. I put felt sticky furniture thingys on the bottom of the pockets.(inside where you can't see them they helped prevent any scraping. What kind of pulls did you use. We had a hard time finding something different, but we did.

For painted pocket doors I always add a 2 inch wide strip to the pocket edge.
This strip blocks the edge of the pocket and also allows the door to stay engaged on a piece of aluminum angle I place on the floor of the pocket.
A groove in the bottom of the door runs almost to the 'show' edge.
The aluminum stops the swinging cold, and unlike the plastic guides that come with the doors does not scratch the paint.
For stained doors with any decoration (panels, etc.) you can attach a strip and paint it black, or order wider doors and rip some of the 'show' edge off. This keeps the decoration centered when the door is closed.
The pocket is of course sized slightly larger to account for the extra door width.
I saw some kits for doubles to make them close together somewhere, but I have been making them using steel sliding door pulleys and 1/16 inch steel cable for a long time.
A couple simple brackets attach the top of the door to the cable to make everything move together.
Stops (single or double) can be added opposite the pocket to block light on that edge.

Van Dykes Restorers has a number of pulls available for the face of the door.
They also have brass edge pulls.
Renovators Supply used to have edge pulls and a few face pulls.
I have built the locks the last few times I needed them, since outside of salvage there is just not much available that is anything but clunky modern looking.

Judiegal - we're probably going to get the Baldwin pocket door hardware (see http://www.precisiondoors.com/rim.htm, the two pictures at the bottom). Nothing super fancy or unusual, but it'll go with the style of the house.

Brickeyee - Thanks for the details about how you do the installation, it sounds quite a bit more professional that whan I got.

I'm still trying to find out how I ended up in this situation, though. I took some pictures to try to explain what I mean, take a look at http://joel.btmmr.com/PocketDoors.pdf. My biggest question is, if you're ordering a prefab pocket door and you want the finished opening to be 48", what size prefab pocket door kit do you order, and what size doors? And, if I do order the right prefab pocket door kit and the right size doors, should the results end up looking like what I've got? Thanks again for your help.

-Joel

Looks to me like they did not bother to adjust the hangers for the door so it is plumb in the opening. IIRC, the
Johnson hardware kit I put in many moons ago allowed for adjusting the way the door hangs. Get you contractor to fix it.

So, I talked to my contactor today, and it turns out that his plan was always to put extra 1/2" jamb stops on the jambs to cover the gaps. I think this is a little weird, since it seems like there were already jamb stops on there, just not big enough. And, he's also going to fix the sloping track, which I suspect will be just a matter of shimming it. Hopefully he won't have to reach too far back into the pocket for that. Thanks everyone for your comments, it seems like all my problems will be addressed with a minimum of fuss, even though this doesn't appear to be the most commonly documented way of installing a pocket door.

-Joel

The biggest mistake I have seen is attaching the track to a weight bearing header.
Other than that the Johnson instructions are pretty good, but the little plastic guides are still a mess.
They scratch the face of the door eventually.