Doors

My house feels like it leaks like a sieve.

There is no insulation in the floor. I am amazed that I have not froze my waterpipes yet! There’s barely any insulation in the roof…and I’m sure I’ve described all this before.

This week, I made a careful evaluation of all the exterior doors. I found most of them have gaps at the bottom. This actually explains why the kitchen and utility room (which has door into the uninsulated garage) are always freezing it seems.

On one of the weekdays, I made a trip to Lowes Home Improvement Center ™ to see just what my possible solutions might be. I fancied upon several door bottom seals and sweeps that looked like they might work.

Saturday morning, I made measurements and plotted a firing solution…no, thats naval warfare..um…I made measurements and plotted a purchasing plan. I have a variety of door types. My front door is an older model steel-clad exterior door — no window. My back door is an older but “modern” wood panel door with window. My garage door is a classic, farmhouse-style solid wood with window.

After noting dimensions all around, I went shopping. Actually, I went shopping with a friend, which while fun is a big mistake for productivity, and we both ran out of time and had to hurry to make a “Narnia” movie showing. Outings being what they are this led to dinner after, and that led to going over to a friend’s house and doing computer repair until midnight.

I was not only physically tired, but overfed, and emotionally drained. Sleep helped stop the insanity.

So today, after church, I started on a project which I had hoped would only take an hour or two at best.

I took the front door off the hinges (3) and removed the old, torn weatherstrip from its base. The new one I bought was not compatible. Hmmm…well, I’ll just have to trade it out for another one later. I left the door on its side and proceeded to the backdoor.

On evaluation of the backdoor, and the door-bottom-seal I had purchased, I concluded that the bottom-seal would not be harmonious with the seal on the threshold. I decided what I needed to do was replace the threshold with a plain one (no rubber seal) and then use the adjustable bottom-seal to make a flat, even seal. I would need to trade out parts for this, later, too.

So I then moved to the garage door…

The garage door has multiple problems. Chief among them is that it doesn’t latch without lifting up on the door by the handle and setting the latch into place. This was discovered to be because the hinge parts were not designed for each other. The door-hingeplate actually had hinge-cylinders that were each one-eighth of an inch shorter than the gap they were supposed to be filling.

I had already purchased replacement hinges a month ago, and decided I would start on that first today, before attempting any other weathersealing.

I broke out my new set of chisels (which I also bought a month ago). Nice chisels! Love the chisels!

I marked up the door so I knew it would line up later, then pulled the hinge pins and went to work. Yada yada… work is slow because I’m doing it all by hand, and while I’ve done all of this in theory several times before, my practical experience is few and far between.

After about 3 hours, I reassemble the door, slip the pins in, tighten up the hinge plate and voila!!… it doesn’t latch. It also rubs the stop-trim on the hinge side of the jamb. THAT, I reckon, can wear itself in over time, so I work on the immediate problem which this was supposed to have solved in the first place!

Ah, now I see. While I did set the hinges in place properly, the frame is still crooked, and now the door is firmly out of square with the strikeplates! I step back and evaluate, and see how the whole frame is thoroughly out-of-square. Hmm…what to do, what to do.

I pull out my handy mototool and start trying to grind the hole in the strikeplate a little lower. Why would I do this insanity? Well, what I’ve yet to describe is how sometime in the past of this home, the owner fixed a custom steel plate with a deadbolt hole and a latch hole onto the latch jamb.

I had always assumed this was because the jamb had just received too many adjustment holes, or maybe it was sort-of an inverted shim, moving the strikeplates closer to the door? It worked (although poorly because of the hinge problem) and so I’d never questioned it. But now that my best grinding bit was full of molten steel and I still had a significant fraction of an inch to grind, I decided a simpler answer would be to just move the plate.

The plate is about 10″ tall and I just observed for the first time that it is at least 3″ wide, and it slips under the stop-trim, which just seemed dumb to me.

I unscrewed the two screws I could see, then pryed the stop trim up. The trim had been nailed on right through the strikeplate. Shazbot!

I try to pull the nails, but one pulls through the wood instead, so I end up beating the bloody $@(! out of the trim to wrench ONE FREAKIN’ NAIL out from under it.

The strikeplate falls off.

Therein I see my ruin.

The giant strikeplate existed because there was no significant wood behind the strikeplate. Flashback to ST:TNG – The universe does not exist beyond bulkhead 317. …

Sheepdip.

So I pry off the moulding on that side, splintering it in a sufficiently significant way to demand its replacement, and since I’m certain it was manufactured in the last evolutionary age, I will have to replace all the interior door moulding to match! Sure enough, the door had either been broken into, termite-ed, or just screwed, drilled, and nailed to pieces.

I figure I can fashion a replacement piece, cut into place and reinfored by a backing plank of 1/4″ hardwood, several screws and some wood putty, and have a reasonable semblance to a real door.

But, I’ve already got the moulding off, and will have to replace all of it anyway… why don’t I just resquare the entire door while I’m at it?

So, this two hour project, I abandoned after seven hours and one more run to Lowes to swap out some parts and pick up the wood I’d need. I will hopefully complete the project tomorrow.

…then maybe sometime this week I can see about sealing up my doors.

As I was noting another diarist before writing this entry, sitting in my office with the door closed and an electric heater running behind me.. for public record, my room is on the same circuit as the computer office, and the breaker seems to work nicely!