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The 45-minute job that ate my whole Saturday
I had to fit a new pre-hung door in a 100-year-old house in my town. The opening was a full inch out of square, which I saw right away. I figured I'd just plane the hinge side and shim the top, easy. Four hours later, I was still there, cutting little wedges and checking the reveal with a feeler gauge. The old frame had settled so much that nothing was straight. My client came by with coffee and just said, 'Looks like the house is winning.' I finally got it to swing clean by dinner time. Has anyone else had a simple door turn into a geometry test from hell?
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davidh9016d ago
My last one like that needed a full quarter inch of scribing on the latch side. I ended up using a block plane and a whole pack of cedar shims from the truck.
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the_logan13d ago
Yeah, my old foreman used to say a door is only simple in a new build... once a house settles, you're basically doing carpentry surgery. He had this trick with a long level and playing cards for shims when the gap was all wrong.
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