The forecast called for clear skies and slightly cooler temperatures. The perfect day for a day-long project – or so we thought. It rained off and on all day and the day-long project has stretched into three.
Materials were assembled early and we began our planning process by 10am. Extraction of the built-in air conditioner unit took longer than anticipated, and already Tom’s hands oozed blood from scrapes and abrasions. Once the A/C was out, the rough-in seemed to go rather well.
With the frame in place and the window pulled out we managed to cut the hole for the door. The window was naturally nailed underneath the siding of the house, so the siding needed to come down. But that was fine, we were going to cut into it anyway. Plus it helped us realize we needed new pieces of siding for this project. Anne ran out to buy siding.
There is something thrilling and terrifying about cutting a giant whole in the side of a house – especially on a cold, rainy afternoon. But we had to keep going. No turning back once that A/C unit came out.
Anne returned with some plywood siding – we were upgrading from the particle board crap. Nice. Slapped that on covering our nice big hole and then had to re-cut the entire thing. Ouch. But then it came time to put in the door and applaud our leveling efforts and general carpentry skills. There were some lingering curiosities about how it would all fit, but our measurements all looked good.
The door is heavy with two large glass windows and we had to lift it about three feet high since the porch doesn’t extend to this corner of the house (that’ll be another project). With some struggle we placed the door in the opening, unfastened the hardware holding the doors shut and wedged it into place. Only problem now was the doors wouldn’t close. It appeared that even after all our leveling the door was askew such that the top of one corner was too high and the bottom of the other was too low. We need to skew it but our opening was measured too well. Clearance at the top was pretty much zero. We needed more space and the sun was setting.
The header was constructed from two 2×6s nailed together. We attempted for a bit to cut them in place, but it wasn’t working too well. Turned out to be much easier to remove the header and cut. The newly cut header was loosely re-nailed and the door was lifted into position again. Still the jamb was skewed, but the doors could be closed if shut in tandem. It was after 10pm at this point – we were delirious with hunger and fatigue – we ate some Subway and called it quits.
With the light of the next morning it was easier to see which way the door frame needed to move and why it wasn’t moving there. So the door came out again, but this time we just dropped it into the living room. After more sawing on the sides and less leveling, we were ready to try again. And this time it actually looked good.
I mean, we aren’t going to win any awards for the smoothest operating door – it takes a bit of extra finesse to close, but it does close. And it opens. And it latches. And it bolts. And the view is great.
