doors

God damn I hate home improvement.

Posted on by grahams

Saturday afternoon we ripped out the old bathroom door, which was less traumatic than I expected..  Didn’t really do any damage to the walls removing the trim and ripping out the old door jamb/frame.  It seemed like everything was going to be peachy, I nailed the small lengths of 2×4 we purchased into the opening to make it a standard-er size, we started attaching the jamb to the frame and making sure it was square, level, and plumb.  We nailed it in on the hinge side in two points, and then shimmed it out on the lock side to give it a test run… And the door struck the jamb at the top lock side of the door.  Not only that, but I drove the nails in all the way, so we had to mar up the jamb getting them back out.  We playedaround with raising the sides and all kinds of things, but no matter what we tried even though the jamb was square/true/plumb/everything it just didn’t matter.  We worked on this whole project for about 5 hours and eventually gave up for the night.

Sunday, we procrastinated as long as possible and started anew.  We were just about to start when Corinna had the flash of genius to call her stepfather for advice.  He is retired now and doing lots of the construction on the addition to her parents’ home in Michigan.  We mentioned that we padded out the space to make the opening “the right size” with six short pieces of 2×4.  We explained that the old 2×4 that formed the hinge-side of the existing frame was completely cockeyed and we were using shims to correct for it.  He provided the (now obvious) suggestion of getting a single 80″ 2×4 to run the entire length of the hinge side, and shim that as necessary to make sure it’s plumb, etc.  Using one long board eliminates discrepancies in plumb/true/squareness between the 3 separate pieces of 2×4.  He also suggested using screws instead of nails, because you have more fine-tuning available by tightening/loosening the screws, plus if you screw up you can easily back them out.

With this knowledge in hand, Corinna ventured out to Home Depot (knowing how much I hate going to that store), got the 2×4, we had it up and shimmed out in 20 minutes, and less than an hour later the door was hung and swinging freely.

So I guess the moral of this story is that installing a pre-hung door probably IS easier than fitting one into an existing jamb if you know what you are doing and do appropriate prep work.

Update: Re-edited this to remove some nonsense sentences (I “repurposed” this text from an email I sent to my dad).

Warranty Fortune Smiles Upon Me

Posted on by grahams

I had a great time in Rochester for the CSH Welcome Back Party, but I think I might be skipping future Welcome Back parties… More and more of my friends are leaving Rochester, and I know fewer and fewer people who live at CSH. I think this realization comes to all alumni, but I guess I finally hit the sweet spot. It seems that each year I spend more time in Rochester catching up with my friends who are visiting from out of town, and less time doing anything with the house. It occured to us that if all we are going to do is hang out with each other, we can pick a place that’s a bit more fun than Rochester… :P This decision doesn’t effect Fucked Up Movie Night, however, so I still plan on being at CSH once or twice a year.. Of course, it’s very possible that next September I will change my mind and end up in Rochester anyway, so this could all be bullshit.

I have had great warranty luck lately… First off, Apple recalled both of the batteries I have for my Powerbook. This worked out fantastically, because I was just getting annoyed by the diminished capacity of the two recalled batteries. Around the same time, I got an email from Sirius saying that due to supply shortages, my warranty exchange on my Starmate Replay (for a scratchy 1/8″ audio jack) was being upgraded to a brand new Sportster 4, which is a much nicer radio. I got that in the mail the other day, the only sucky thing is that I have to send back all of the original equipment for the Starmate, so I had to rip out the old antenna and install the new. I had the Antenna wire hid very nicely through the trunk, and under the molding on the passenger side of the car, so I had to reproduce all of that again. Also, the Starmate ran on 12V DC so lopped off the lighter adaptor that came with it and hardwired it into the cars power inside the dash. I can’t exactly return that, and the new radio runs on 5V DC, so I will take some kind of hit on that..

and I have been trying to finish up all of the lingering projects around the house. She started staining the doors the other day, and I masked off the bathroom to finally prime and paint it. After it’s painted, the bathroom needs baseboard and door trim, and all of the old radiators still need to be painted. I want to finish all of the woodwork this weekend so we can finally clean up the apartment fully…