The Doors

The Doors.

Not The Doors rock band, you silly. This is about the french doors we are putting in our house. Steve decided to start the process of mounting the french doors into the frame. 

This is really his project, from start to finish. But I am here to help along the way. And take pictures! He is the one that didn't like the singular doorway that someone made out of this double wide opening years ago. So now that he removed that hodgepodge doorway, and we fixed the floor, it's time to mount the two french doors.  He carried them in before I even had a chance to get up, get dressed and have some coffee. 

We ordered these interesting hinges called "Swing Away" or " Offset Hinges" to allow the door to swing back beyond the plinth block down by the mop boards. 

Without these special hinges, the doors could only open about 90 or 100 degrees before hitting that trim wood. We would like them to open up a full 180 degrees and lay flat against the walls in the office if we want them to. It also saves on them getting accidentally pushed beyond their capacity, and straining the hinges or cracking the door frame wood.

Using his router, he carefully made a new mortise section for each hinge in the doorway framing. There had never been any hinges on this doorway before. So this was all new territory.  I stood with the shop vac hose nozzle set right next to the router, to keep down the sawdust in the house. He did pretty good for standing and holding the heavy router in a horizontal position to do such a precision cut.

Of course, now the problem with an old house, the openings and doorways and floors and walls are never square. We temporarily screwed in the hinges with one screw each to start holding the door in position.  Now he can level side to side, front to rear, and top to bottom.

Careful measuring, checking, leveling, and adjusting at the hinges is necessary to get them to swing just right and not be out of square.  The doors need to also meet up in the middle with just a perfect even gap, and also meet at the top and bottom.

Most people just buy a set of doors already set into a frame and hanging on hinges.  Not us. LOL...  It was time consuming work. We took the door off, carried it out to the front porch, and back in to put it back on a couple times, taking time to adjust things and plane it down just a little bit more with each try.

Steve borrowed this power planer from his dad earlier this week. (Thanks Dad P.!)  It sure was a lot easier than trying to do it by hand with a manual one.  We set each door out on the front porch against the railing to work on the edges.  Also to keep down the mess in the house. 

He took down the woods layers a little bit at a time from the edge of the first door and make sure it will open and close properly and fit right at the hinges and the center where the two doors meet. 

Once wood is cut off, it can't be put back on again!  So he worked a small bit at a time, trying to be as careful as he could be.  I was the "front door opener/door closer" person each time we carried them out and back in again. 

Steve was concerned that the planer may take off a little too much with each swipe. Once he got down to about where he wanted to be, he was getting worried. What he really needed was a belt sander. And can you believe it? He doesn't own a belt sander!

I never ever deny Steve the opportunity to buy new tools. He uses them for everything and it will come in handy again at another time, I am sure. Well...  we ran downtown to get our flu shots (more on that later), we buzzed next door to the little Ace Hardware store and picked up a inexpensive little Skil belt sander.

He said it doesn't need to be a high quality top of the line tool, we're not sure how often he'll ever use it. He got by this long without one. But it was needed for this project and it will serve its purpose and be easier on the budget.

Now he needed to carefully sand down any wood that was too high so each of the doors could fit the uneveness of the existing doorway.

It worked great 

and we got them both mounted perfectly!!!!

The Brass Black solution I ordered from Amazon came. I tried it on 2 sections of the brass caning. Nope, it doesn't do a thing, other than some blue colored run-off.  So we will settle for leaving the brass between the beveled glass panels (for now).  It's not what I wanted, but it's not that noticeable.  The beveled glass panes look so nice and they shine and glisten in the sunlight. 

The new glass door knobs are on their way! UPS says they were sent on Nov 4 from California and are still enroute. Somewhere. I hope soon....

Next comes the cross piece, called a transom.  Steve is measuring for that right now while I type this. Last night we ran and got some trim wood called "stop" material to make sure the doors aren't extended too far into the livingroom beyond their range.  That would result in cracking the wood of either the doors or the frame.  Once he gets the transom in on top, the stop material goes around the edges (so little grandkids can't over swing the doors in their opening).  

In the top transom space, I am working on a creative idea, using an old broken stained glass window that I am going to reconfigure and restore to fill up the space above. I am excited to start that, but can't until I have the exact dimensions of the transom opening. 

We look at the doors now, and they seem to be what the space needed, and they look like they were always meant to be there. I am glad that we changed that room over to an office.  I have a few ideas of what I want to do in there yet.  And the old office will soon be a more "fun" bedroom for the grandkids. 

As for our flu shots, it was one year to the date that we got them last year.  We go to our local pharmacy and they run it through our health insurance prescription card, so there isn't any out of pocket fee to us. 

I was teasing Steve that he flinched wriggled and squiggled and was being a big baby....

I swear that I see HUGE crocodile tears coming out of those baby blues.  My friend Ida said he was only faking it so he could get a lolly pop!!

I took my shot with a smile, but you can't see it under my mask.  Yes, we still mask up wherever we go. And we wash our hands with sanitizer as soon as we get back into the car.  Even though we are both fully vaccinated, we set the appointment to get our covid booster shots in 2 weeks.  I have to wait 90 days from when I got my monoclonal antibody IV after getting covid in early September.  Hope that the booster can protect us for the rest of the winter. 

After supper last night, Binney was all excited to see one of her big brown friends come into the yard.  The deer have been hiding since bow season began, so we haven't had too many come in. The gun hunting season starts on Nov 20, so we will see even less during that time. This one had been drinking out of the bird bath.  Blurry pic, sorry.

Once all of the excitement died down of her backyard visitor, then Binney decided it was cold enough to come up and cuddle with me and my quilt in the She Shed. She is doing quite well being an "only dog" since losing Finnegan.  It will be a year in January that he is gone. Sigh. 

 

We watched some HGTV shows and waited for the forecasted snow to start.  It never did.  But tonight we might get a few inches, which will be fun for tomorrow's Packer Game. It's always more fun to watch it when they play in snow.

Today I have a pork roast to pop in the oven, and maybe bake a pumpkin pie. I want to try out a new recipe before Thanksgiving, so this is far enough in advance to have some pie and not be sick of it near the end of the month. LOL.