House Work

I've been doing a lot of work on the house recently. So much, in fact, that I haven't really had any spare time for things like, say, posting to my blog. So I've decided that instead of posting nothing, I'm going to post about the house work I'm doing.

Over the weekend I installed two and a half doors.

The first was actually two bifolds. I pulled out the old bifolds, unscrewed the strip, screwed in the new strip, and replaced the bifolds. I had to do this without letting the doors actually touch the ground, because we're in the middle of refinishing the floors, and they're in a delicate state. Easily scratched.

The second door was the easy one. I removed the old door by unscrewing its hinges and ripping it out of the frame (I didn't bother with the hinge pins). Then I measured, measured again, made some marks on the new door, measured again, squared off the hinge holes on the new door, mounted the hinges on the new door, measured again, measured once more, mounted one hinge on the door frame, connected the door, measured again, and finally mounted the final hinge. Then I installed a new latch and doorknob. Again, I had to do all this without letting the door touch the ground (which was harder this time, because the door is heavier).

The other door (still only half done) was a lot more work, because the door frame is slightly slanted. So I had to cut triangularly-shaped pieces off of the top and bottom, to make it fit. That involved about two hours of measuring, two hours of sawing (with a blunt saw blade), and two hours of chiseling. My hands, back, and arms were exhausted by the time I was done.

This isn't the first time I've hung new doors. I replaced six doors at the last apartment. Eventually I got it down to where I could install a new door in about 45 minutes. Unfortunately I seem to have forgotten everything I learned -- the first door this time took about six hours (mostly due to paranoia that I'd irrevocably mess something up). I expect I'll speed up again before I'm done, since there are four and a half doors left to do.