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Today I spent most of the day working on my new door.

Here’s the backstory – A few weeks ago I’d picked up a nice 3′ x 3′ vinyl window (one that matches the pair of 2′x 3′ windows that I put in the kitchen) at a garage sale for $7. I hung it in my west-south-west wall to let in morning light and give me a view of my back yard. but I decided I really didn’t like it; it didn’t let in enough light. I pondered taking it out and putting in a bigger window, and in fact picked up a 4′ x 4′ window from a salvage store at the marina dump for $10. But when I tacked it up I didn’t like the way that one looked either;  on my little 8′ x 12′ wall it was disproportionately large and kind of messed up the wall space.

So, after a bit of consideration I decided to scrap the big window, take out the window I had just put in and install it in the north-northeast wall (which currently has no windows in the living room), and then find a french door and install it kitty corner to my patio french doors, flanking the future home of the potbelly stove. This would add a nice symmetry to the room, give me window space low enough to look down the hill and into the canyon, and also provide convenient access to the backyard.

Now all I needed was a 15-lite (15 glass pane) french door!

I poked around on craigslist for a few days but the closest I came was a really nice 36″ exterior 15-lite prehung door for $175. The problem with it was that it was more money than i could shell out for a door, and a 36″ door was just too big. I was looking for a 30″ door.

Also, I knew I needed to buy two sheets of plywood for the wall to replace the ones I’d ruined by cutting in the window. I knew that was gonna cost me about $40.

So I went back to the home depot.

And I found this.

It’s a 28 inch interior 10-lite french slab door. I hadn’t intended on buying a 28″ door, but they didn’t carry any 15-lite doors, and the 10-lite came in 24″, 28″, 30″, and 36″ sizes. The 36″ door was right out of the running. I checked out the 24″ door, but realistically I’m a pretty big dude, and that’s a bit of a tight squeeze, besides, it wouldn’t have let in much light. I really didn’t like the proportions of the glass panes on the 30″ door – too square, it would have looked funny next to the panes on the 15-lite patio doors. Finally I pulled out the 28″ door. The panes were nicely proportioned, the door was a bit slimmer and more elegant looking than the 30″, and it looked like I could move through it comfortably AND save a couple precious inches of wall space. It cost about $112, which was damned cheap compared to virtually all of the other doors they were selling (slab doors are a lot cheaper than pre-hung doors). This left me a little money to buy my two sheets of plywood. The total came out to something like $165

When you buy a slab door it doesn’t come with hardware or a door jamb, and installing the hardware, building the jamb, and hanging the door can be a lot of work, and tricky work at that.

(At this point i ought to [re]iterate that I am not a carpenter. My carpentry skills are very basic and built on abstract principals as opposed to concrete experience. The only reason I’m able to get anything done is by being patient and methodical).

So, the first thing I had to do was build a jamb for the door. My first intention had been to try and repurpose the jamb from the ugly 36″ door that I’d just taken out, by taking the thing apart and chopping the top and the threshold. As it turned out that wasn’t going to work because the door was differently sized in every dimension, although i was able to salvage the door hardward.

My plan was to install the new door the same way I’d installed all the others – opening out instead of in. Doors are always installed opening into the house, and I’m really not sure why. I’ve asked a couple carpenter’s about it, and even Jay Shafer, and the consensus is that it’s just a convention. The only advantage that I can see to doing it that way is that it keeps the hinges inside the building as opposed to outside where someone could conceivably pop the pins out and break in. But the way I figure it, if I have exterior doors with glass panes, anyone determined enough to get in isn’t going to have too much trouble one way or another, and hey, I’d rather they took the whole door off than start breaking glass. Besides which, outward opening doors can work wonders in a small house; when I open up my patio doors they lay flush against the outside wall of the house and give me this gorgeous gaping exposure to my deck and all the loveliness beyond. It’s almost like taking out a whole wall.

So anyway, I bit the bullet and built a new jamb out of some 1×12 pine I’d salvaged, as well as the aluminum threshold from the old door jamb. I built the jamb on friday after my first (and last) day of paid work for the week. Building the jamb took about two hours, and was really satisfying when it was done. I built it the way I thought it was supposed to be, with the inside dimensions a half inch wider than the door.

Yesterday morning I had a couple hours free early in the morning and I got to work installing the hinges on the door. I didn’t take any pictures of that process, but the procedure is the same as putting the hinges in the jamb. Today I finished the process.

The first step is figuring out where to place the hinges. When I installed them in the door I aimed for symmetry, not just for aesthetics, but also because I figured consistency would make the job a little easier. So I installed the hinges eight inches from the top and the bottom of the door, with the third one more or less right in the middle. This really paid off later on.

On the jamb, I measured down from the top and gave myself an extra 1/4″ of space at the top of the door. This is actually a bit much, I think, but if I didn’t allow that much I would have had a big gap at the bottom of my funky homemade jamb. I’ve discovered that carpentry (especially when you are working with reclaimed odds and ends) is all about attention to fussy little details that bite you in the ass if you lose focus, and then figuring out how to fix your mistakes when a detail escapes your scrutiny.

So setting the hinges involves tracing them out in position, and then taking a chisel and scoring the outline of the wood to be removed.

the chisel won’t cut a round corner, so I had to score that part carefully with an exacto knife.

Then you take your chisel and a hammer and drive the chisel into the wood to be removed to cut it into a series of flaky scales.

These flaky scales can be scraped out easily with the chisel, which leaves the hinge area slightly recessed.

The easy part is done. Now you have to take the chisel and carefully gouge out the remaining wood until the recess is flat and deep enough to accommodate the hinge.

the other day my dad caught me using one of my chisels to turn a flathead screw. He told me I was breaking a cardinal rule. After gouging with a distorted chisel I understand why.

Once you’ve got the wood gouged out satisfactorily, you can install your hinge.

If you’re installing a door with three hinges, you get to do this procedure six times.

When I had all the hinges placed I tried to hang the door in the jamb, only to discover that the middle hinge wasn’t lined up properly. It didn’t take long for me to realize my mistake – I had measured from the top of the door jamb, but from the BOTTOM of the door! Wow. Extra stupid. I had made all the measurements several times before starting the work, but hadn’t realized I had the door upside down. In my defense, working in a small space with a slab door, it’s not immediately apparent which side is the top and which is the bottom. Then again,  it’s probably just cause I’m an idiot.

Fortunately for me, I had tried to mount all the hinges symmetrically, so I only had to move the middle hinge down a little bit on the door to get it to line up.

But then, when I got the door hanging, I observed a 3/8″ gap between the edge of the door and the inside of the jamb on the door handle side. Irritating – on the hinge side it looked beautiful. 3/8 of an inch was really too much of a gap, a 1/4″ i might have been able to live with, but as it was i had to take the door back out, disassemble the jamb, and then lop off 3/16″ from the top and from the aluminum threshold. When I got it all back together again it looked a lot better.

After I finished reassembling the jamb and putting the door back in, I spent a couple hours taking out the window and all the framing I had just put in for it, prying off my ruined plywood, and framing up for the door and the wall. By that time it was getting late and I called it a day. I hadn’t gotten to the point of taking the plywood all the way off and putting up the new sheets. Fortunately I can keep the sheet in the corner where I am installing the door. I won’t bother cutting anything out of that sheet either until all the new plywood is in place, then I’ll cut around the door. This is as far as I got today.

And this should give you some idea of what it’s ultimately going to look like when it’s finished

Imagine the window cutout gone, the door cut out where it is, and a potbelly stove between the doors. Ruckus is looking a little concerned because I’ve put the door in where his bed was. I’ll probably set him up in the corner until I get the potbelly stove in, which isn’t going to be any time soon.