Door Debacle
Creative shimming
We've given up on the door. We spent hours and hours and hours and just couldn't get it to hang right. In the photo above you can see our first attempt at shimming the jamb into the frame. We thought we did a great job since our level told us it was perfectly straight and square. Apparently the level lies, because no matter what we did we could not get the door to hang correctly. One corner insisted on sticking out and scraping the jamb.
Not well hung
This was the door to begin with. As you can see, instead of opening up toward the corner where the closet is, it opened into the centre of the room. If it weren't for that, we would just have kept the original jamb and replaced the door. This way was just too awkward. The lightswitch is hiding behind Alex's robe, and with the door open the room seemed too small and we couldn't place any furniture against that wall. We want to put Alex's dresser there.
Good enough for now
Right now the new door is hanging with a minimum of nails. It's safe and it'll do until we get it fixed. It can be closed, but just barely. I was so discouraged. Jeremy used to work with a guy who has since become a carpenter so we're going to give him a call and see if he'll help us out. We want him to build us a new jamb and use the door we bought. The jamb that came with the door is made of MDF and rather flimsy anyway. We've got four more doors to replace in the hallway and we're going to ask him to do them too, but a bit later on.
I'm clever and resourceful and I can do a lot of things. I can hang and tape drywall, for fuck's sake. I'm no professional and it takes me a long time, but I can do it. This door defeated me. I felt so awful last night and I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. I felt like I had destroyed my house. After we cleaned up and vacuumed I called my sister, who talked me down from the ledge. She pointed out that we didn't actually damage anything and we didn't actually waste much money since we're still going to use the door we bought. She's totally right and I felt much better after talking to her. I needed someone to tell me that it's okay if there are some things that I can't do. There is obviously an art to hanging doors. It's not easy. I accept that.
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Comments
Geez Louise, that's a huge project you took on, and you got much farther than I would have gotten. At least, a lot farther than I would have gotten sober. I think it's pretty amazing that with all those wonky parts, you didn't end up damaging anything. Good for you!
Sunny · Mar 30 · 3:33 PM
Don't beat yourself up about it. Hanging doors properly is difficult. Here in Holland there are carpenter just doing that all day long, they're specialised in just doing the doors. And maybe the carpenter you're getting in, can give you some good tips too.
marjon · Mar 31 · 5:13 AM