Gateway to Hell

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Talk about falling off the face of the blogging earth.  Life has not stopped in the last five months.  I started drafting an entry in March, and got a whole three sentences into it.  I've lost the spirit of the original post I started, but I should probably fill in the gap.This will no doubt be a ridiculously long post.

I'm now sure that I have evidence of the universe conspiring against me.  Wasn't I just embarking on a nice little project in the hallway?  I had gotten so far with the ceiling, nothing could stop me now, right?

Yeah, right....

I will now account the troubled relationship with, and the rise of, my arch nemesis, the front door.  First off, the front entry consisted of two paneled solid wood doors.

The interior side was stained while the exterior was painted a lovely shade of brown like the rest of the trim.

When we first moved in, I thought it would be really smart to weatherproof the doors, so I set about replacing the door shoes and gluing foam around the perimeter.  Well, when I took off the dummy door shoe, the entire bottom three inches came with it.  The culprit was some significant wood rot.  Like a guilty child that has just snapped off the statue's finger, I hurriedly glued it back together and put on a new shoe.  The new shoes didn't do a great job of keeping out the drafts, and I was forced to sew rice socks.  I used a spiffy tribal batik for the cover.  I later upgraded to draft guards.
The next irritation came when I tried to get the dummy door open.  The top latch wouldn't budge.  Stuck latch?  Grab some WD-40!  Result?  The latch became so loose that it wouldn't stay up.  For the last three years, I've been jamming tape, etc. into the opening to try and keep the latch in place.  Not much luck in that endeavor. 
Yet another sign of the imminent demise of the doors was when I discovered I could actually see daylight through one of the panels.  I attempted to cover the crack with wood putty, but it just dried and split right over the original crack.  The dummy door was now being held together, officially, with glue, putty, and tape.

After a while, we started having problems with the live door.  The key kept sticking in the lock.  One day, I was unlocking the door and the whole lock mechanism came out with the key.  Springs and little metal pellets spewed everywhere.  Good thing I'm really familiar with my local ACE Hardware Store. 

After that little episode., the handleset started sticking.  To get in, we would have to body slam the door.  After a year of putting everything down to manhandle the door, I finally googled how to fix the handle.  It took five seconds to clean out the mechanism with my good ol' standby, WD-40.  I did, however, order a new handleset as a backup.  Talk about foreshadowing.  The final straw came when the hubby slammed the door a little too hard.  Here's how I know the universe is plotting - it was two weeks after I started on the hallway.  All of that body slamming had apparently weakened the dummy door.  An entire chunk came off the interior.  

Now the entire structure of the dummy door was compromised.  The mechanism holding the bottom latch of the door had nothing to hold on to.  Anyone couldwalk up and kick in the doors.  My solution?  A glob of molding compound and brown duct tape.

Keeping a door held together with duct tape is kind of the last straw. 

I had no intention of replacing the door for at least five years.  I can only deduce that this is all part of some plot by the universe to test my patience, keep me from finishing my other projects, and continue the cycle of house poverty.  Next step is to resign to the obvious and buy new doors.

The upside was that I could finally buy some energy efficient doors and get rid of the draft.  Fiberglass, here we go!  I went with some doors that didn't come prestained/painted, so yes, more work for me.  Three weeks after ordering the doors, they were in!  Anyone see anything missing?  Yes, that's right, the dummy door didn't get ordered with the holes for the handleset precut.  Apparently, the Kwikset rep mis-represented to the Lowe's door guy how the dummy set gets installed.  I had to wait yet another month for someone to come out and drill a hole and install that hardware.  On the upside, it gave me ample time to stain and paint without any obstructions.

 I'm so burnt out writing about these ridiculous front doors.  Staining took a whole weekend.  We ended up missing the crab feed - I have never been to one and bought tickets for the school's fundraiser.  It took another two weeks to primer and fully paint the inside of the doors.  I'm very proud of the end results.  So, in the end, the curse turned into a bit of a blessing.