"The Door Project"

After giving it a good amount of thought, we've decided that having the babies in a room upstairs and having our master bedroom on the main floor is going to cause a lot of stair climbing. I decided that I was going to give up exercise for fatherhood, so this created a dilemma. How can I refuse to exert myself physically and still be a good dad?

The answer ended up being simple - we'd turn our formal dining room into a nursery. The odds of us having a formal sit down dinner anytime soon are about equal to those of us not getting a mini-van (more on that later, I'm sure). Also, the room is carpeted which will make it a good place for the babies to crawl around and play when the time comes.

Unfortunately, our dining room didn't have any doors on either of its entrances. The entrances had door jams and moldings, but nothing to keep the dogs or any noise out of there. Also, since the builder didn't have the intention to put doors in, nothing was plumb or square. I like to think of myself as a pretty handy guy. This, however, was one of those projects where the outcome of even the most minor of mistakes was going to be difficult (expensive) to fix. I decided to hire a professional but buy the materials myself.




Enter Dale. He owns his own woodworking company. He has a van with the companies name on the side that's filled with tools. He came recommended. Legit, right? Nope. I won't go into all of the details or bash his company by name. It's too painful to re-live. Needless to say, if you're getting any work done you should avoid hiring anyone named Dale just to be safe.

After 12 hours and two visits to the house, Dale manages to get the doors hung. There was some argument over payment that was settled by one of my favorite negotiation techniques - the "stare at Dale and be silent until he agrees to knock a couple of bucks off to end the uncomfortable silence" method.

All that was left to do is put a couple of coats of paint on the doors to make them match the woodwork in the house. Having spent half of a summer in college as a professional painter, I figured that this was something that I could take on myself. Plus, I had a strong desire to want to "do something for the girls." You know, feel like an integral member of the team with Carolyn and all of the nurses and doctors doing most of the feeding / caring for the girls. I'm sure there's chapters of books on parenting that describe this phenomenon (the books Carolyn has been asking me to read, mind you...). Anyways, after hiring Dale, me choosing to paint was mistake number 2 on this project. I spent the rest of the weekend before last sanding, prepping, and priming the doors. Then, I spent a couple of hours each night (after coming home from the hospital) painting them. And all of this weekend.

As I go to hang the doors last night I realized something was wrong. Even though Dale knew I was going to paint the doors, he didn't leave enough tolerance for them to fit anymore. They'd close, but would stick. Bad. I was frustrated. I was also a little concerned about how to fix in the (potentially) two days before the babies would come home from the hospital.

My solution was to wander aimlessly down the tool aisle in Home Depot until I found something that would solve my problem. Cut them down with a saw? Nope, the handles/latches had set backs so I couldn't rip that side down and I didn't want to mess with the hinge side. Plane them down? Nope, there was an astragal (fancy door term - impressed, eh?) that would make a hand planer not work. Chisel? I'd hack it up too bad. Sander? Pesky astragal again plus a lot of wood to remove. The solution? A $12 tool of massive awesomeness:

Ten minutes of shaving and the doors fit perfect. Slap a thin coat of paint on the sides and we'll put this project behind us. The lesson here comes from The Frieds, "don't do yourself what you can pay someone else to do for you."

The finished product: