Week 34 - Doors

This was an exciting week for me, and it was all about closets and doors. First the storm door, which has had a large gap along the bottom because there was no sweep. As it turned out, the sweep was there after all. It had been stored inside the adjustable bottom piece. We found this out when we pulled it off to install the replacement piece (with sweep) that they finally sent us. This little bit of information was something that no one bothered to tell us during any of the calls made to complain about the door gap. Go figure.

The next big thing was the pocket doors. They were misaligned so that the doors did not slide into the pocket smoothly, binding about halfway in.

Originally the problem seemed to be construction materials jutting into the path of the door deep in the pocket and a bow in the side supports, but when these problems were eventually adjusted, the doors still did not slide smoothly, although they were much better. Because we had been focussed on the middle, difficult to reach supports, it wasn't until this week that it occurred to us that we could adjust the alignment by moving the outside supports. In the end we un-nailed the supports from the subfloor, used a couple of shims to shift the slot about 1/4" and nailed it back down. Problem solved. Yeah!

Finishing the fourth pocket door and hanging it just moved back up near the top of my long list of things to do next.

And I finally got back to hanging the last two closet doors for the hall coat closet.

As with the other double door closet, I hung the first door expecting to then use it and the second door to determine the placement of the left door frame upright.

Unpleasantly, what I discovered was that the two doors together were about 3/4" wider than the space available. In fact, both doors were slightly wider at the top than at the bottom, which enhanced the problem.

So the first door came back down, and I took 3/8" off each door. I did this by marking the cut line, clamping my 4' level to that line and used it as a guide for my saw. About half way down I had to move and reclamp the level. I also had to plane and sand the resulting edge to square it up.

Once that was done, I rehung the first door, put in the support and hung the second door. They are a slightly tight fit but from this point on I will take down the doors one at a time, finish, and then rehang them. Any necessary fine adjustments will be done when the door is finished but, for now, I have functional doors.

It also became necessary to raise my hall light, which hung down into the second door's swing. I did this by flattening the two S-shaped links which the light hangs from. Eventually, I will also need to shorten the electrical connection, which is now looped twice through the chain, as well.

The closet doors are all held closed by ordinary kitchen cabinet door catches installed at the top of each door. They will have simple knobs when they are finished, but for the interim the holes where the original doorknob was works fine to open them.

Finally, I put up the trim around all the closet doors. It makes a surprising difference to the whole look of the hall!

At the end of the week I took down the shelves, and everything on them, from my old office wall and reinstalled them into the new office closet. First the uprights were screwed to the back wall studs. (pictures from earlier in the project proved very helpful in locating them.)

Then the shelves were cut down to fit inside the closet, hung on the uprights and refilled with all my various office materials. I like having all of this stuff inside a closet much better than out in the open as it was in my old office.

The last little thing I did this week was to lengthen the chain on my office ceiling fan, which makes it possible to change the speed of the fan by standing on my desk instead of getting out a ladder.

When the weather cooled I closed and locked the top windows, slowed the speed of the fan, and changed the direction from up draft to down draft (a switch that still requires the ladder, but I figure I'll only do this twice a year). Now instead of pulling hot air up and out the upper vent windows it circulated the warm air that rises to the 12' ceiling back down into the room. As it gets colder, I'll test whether faster or slower speed on the fan makes any difference (I'm thinking a faster speed might cause an unpleasant draft), but even now it is definitely warmer along the floor when the fan is on.

Week 35 - Basement