While I know that mauling can affect the shape of a frame, there is no such thing as a board-stretcher, and even 5lb mallet-driven shims cannot make the top and bottom of this framework equal.
Measuring the two jambs and lintel yields 33 1/4 inches. Measuring the two jambs and threshold yields 33 1/2 inches. THIS may be the reason we have shimmed and fought this thing for 6 hours.
Jane did the brunt of the work, and collapsed, after calling Lowe’s. We only have to transport this one back and they will give us another one. I don’t know the total weight of this thing, but Jane and I cannot carry it when it is mated with the frame. We can lift it, barely, and since I can lift and carry 40 lbs, and lift 50, and Jane is stronger than I am, considerably, so this thing exceeds a hundred pounds when in its frame.
Eeek! Please, please call OSGuy for help. He has 1) muscles, 2) a trailer, and 3) a truck for hauling things.
(PS: I’m back in town now.)
Oh, we’ll get it. We got it here.
Welcome home, BTW.
We have a door guy at work…it’s a real lumber yard, ya know. He is very good, let me know if you want any advice from him. I just deliver them… don’t know nothin’ about installing those babies
Well, if there’s a 1/4 difference between the compressed joint across at top and at bottom, that door’s not going to hang true. That’s our problem. We could bash the joint apart, and go ahead and screw it to the house frame, but given the ding in the woodwork and the missing screen, we are beginning to think this door was assembled at 4:58 on a Friday, and quality control was already planning their weekend.
Aiee! Before you accept the next door + frame, bring along your measuring tape and insist on checking for good measurements and squareness before you take delivery. No home supply place will ever compensate you for time you’ve wasted on a bad part, and your time is valuable. Maybe keeping the old door frame would have been a good thing 🙁
Does this mean you now have no door, having ripped out the old one in anticipation of a new?!?
No door + young kitten = big problem !!
Well, the old door frame wouldn’t fit the new door. We’d planned to use it, then not, when the dimensions weren’t right. But we’ll get it. Next time we measure before we buy!
Fortunately though this is an exterior armor-plated door, it is mounted between kitchen and mud room, which has its own exterior door—which needs repair, but hey, one step at a time. At least we are secure. And once this vented door is in place, I will have a way of cross ventilating the kitchen. If you broil things, this is a good idea!
Hmmm, any reason a decorative series of 3″ holes couldn’t have been drilled into the old door? or a new one that actually fits in a prehung frame?
It’ll be lovely when we get it hung!
Well, booger. On the lighter side of things, it is mango season here. I have a batch of mango ice cream going round in the electric ice cream maker, just to torture you and Jane 😉 Of course, if you are allergic to mangoes, it might not be such torture; mangoes are distantly related to poison ivy, after all.
I think of Indian mango cream pudding. Yum. And dinner at Gopuram, our favorite Indian restaurant—which is, unfortunately, in Oklahoma City.
Doors can make you laugh with joy or cast you into the pit of despair. My girlfriend has a 105 year old Queen Anne and I’ve had to make several doors for it. I wrote “had” because you don’t make doors unless you have to. And I don’t have a shop, just the back yard.
But when it’s installed you will smile inside every time you go through it.
Phil Brown
That really doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.
By the way, I just had to rearrange all my hardbound Cherryh books to fit the new one in! Here’s a picture of how they look (you might recognize the bookcase, too! LOL!): http://zettepicaday.blogspot.com/
Lol!
My door adventures were all helping (or more usually watching) my father. He decided (after I’d left home) to close the one open side on the patio,which meant installing a new outside door in the family room. Oak, with a window (I think six or nine lights). And a frame – he leveled it vertically, too, so it hung true. It was *heavy*: I was the one bracing it when he was putting the door into the frame.
His other door project was taking the eight doors salvaged from the old church we went to, and turning them into doors for the cupboard in the garage, after he retired and they moved to Texas. Seven feet tall, pine (still fragrant after the better part of a century) with redwood panels, and about six coats of paint on them, ranging from chocolate brown to white. (The church had gotten them from a school, and used them as folding doors.)
(Advice to handyfolk: don’t try painting redwood. It bleeds through. Use stain, or shellac it it first to seal the wood.)
I’d like to recommend a book if you don’t have it already–The Reader’s Digest New Complete Do It Yourself Manual
http://www.amazon.com/New-Complete-Do—Yourself-Manual/dp/0895773783/
Just about every household type of repair you can think of, including installing a door and including pictures. Best 20 bucks I ever spent 🙂
Sounds like you are living Frustration City. I too, wondered about a door to the world and Eushu. Glad that at least you don’t have to contend with that problem. Here’s hoping the Great Door Problem is solved posthaste. 🙂
Meanwhile after a week of messing around with the well pump, we called the pump guy. (Wonderful guys who apologize if they can’t be there within half an hour.) The pump has not been in great shape for at least a year, pushed a bit more when the well ran dry last winter, finally passed out last week. Finally said “enough!” and made the call yesterday and of course we needed a new pump. ( My various vacation plans have been slowly melting away.) Being without a pump is not quite the horror show it sounds like. Not for nothing did I live in the woods for twenty years with no hot water. It’s just a question of being creative with sump pumps and heating water on the stove. 😮
I don’t rely on a pump for house water, but my marine tank and koi pond do. They’re a strange beast, pumps. My marine tank pump uses a weird impeller that should last until the heat-death of the universe, being a cast piece of metal with a hole in it, and the whole thing magnetically driven. I’ve had to have it apart, since a cerith snail shell exactly fits that opening 🙁 but it is tough, and decouples itself if stalled. The pond pump is even fiercer, and I shudder at the possibility it may one day bite the big one. My basement is decorated with small bits and pieces of Maxijet pumps, little guys: you hate to throw a good impeller away, and, oh, you might need another intake guard someday, or, well, was that impeller for a 400 or a 1200? —
Smokey and Goober’s new game is to pop out the *front* door and see if the human notices. This is worrisome to the frazzled human, because I’m one street away from a major highway. If they were to stay out and go a-wand’ring…well, I’d be surprised if they could make it back. — Must get collars on them again. Hope they’ll keep the dang things on. (It is for this reason plus the risks of FIV that I keep them in.)
Well, doors are my new-old problem too. For some time, I’ve been putting off getting a new gate for my front-side fence into the back yard. But alas, I can’t wait much longer, and alas again, I’m not the one with the time or muscles to put it in myself. I can, however, buy the gate, posts, fence planks, and hardware. But budget-wise, that cannot be this week.
One of my kitchen light switches is now Off Limits. No, it hasn’t decided to magically run the ceiling fan, dishwasher, or vacuum cleaner or microwave. (Heheh. It has, though, decided to “fizzle” when turned on. There’s a loose connection there, I think is all. But rather than doing what I might not be able to see, I’ll ask a handyman friend…or call an electrician. Again, budget is interfering with life, there. So meanwhile, that switch and it’s mate on the other side of the room are off-limits, to avoid risk. (The other switch, I believe to be fine.)
— Oh, and after application of flea medicine last week, Smokey lost fur on the patch where the liquid was applied. His fur is shorter overall, which I’m taking to be allergy or other irritation, or simply his body dealing with his second summer. The one little patch will grow back. The fur shorter overall, I think is normal enough, though it’s a good bit shorter than Goober’s and has me slightly surprised. (I don’t see any sign of other irritation or parasites, just…quite short fur. (It’s still soon enough after he was neutered that it might be hormones in combination.)
Sigh. Home ownership is not always Easy Street, but it beats being under someone else’s thumb (or loud stereo or crazy habits).
On the plus side, the tomato plants are doing great, and the green onions are doing well. Not yet sure about the radishes or bell peppers, and I have to get more basil. — Brand new at veggie gardening, but doing nicely so far…despite the drought.
Goal: Get pictures posted by end of month to my site.
One can’t help wondering where did that quarter inch go? It would seem that the only options if one assumes that none of it was warped out of plane and the door will actually fit within the frame are a) the door tapers from bottom to top or b) there’s at least a quarter inch cumulative gap between the door and the jambs at the bottom. The first explanation would require two coincidental or at least one intentional error since a tapered door would only fit snugly into a tapered frame. O tempora, o mores.