Showing posts with label door. Show all posts
Showing posts with label door. Show all posts

Locksets

Last week I moved the bed into a corner to make the bedroom look bigger. Last night I thought, "What this fancy new bedroom needs is a working door lockset so the door will stay closed." I pulled the invoice for the replacement bathroom lockset from a few years ago and looked up its sku # on Van Dyke's website. The price had increased $4, to $20! Yeep!

So I thought about the remaining five doors with original locksets and found that the only operating latch of the bunch was in the door separating the public from the private side of the house. If I switched this one with the bedroom set, then the bedroom door would latch closed. I was just about to install this in the bedroom door when I saw it had a single screw on one of the big flat sides, holding the box together.

I'd never been curious about the workings of the original bathroom lockset mainly because I was newcomer to old houses and the grunge that can go with them. I knew that if I opened the bath lockset, roach eggs and spiders and rust would pop out and stick to my face. Now, I don't care as much.

Undoing the box, I discovered it's really very simple inside. The guts are rough cast metal. The latches seen on the outside are brass. The 6 parts all overlap each other with cast pegs. There is no oiling necessary. In fact, these look like a great engineering project for elementary kids, like something you'd find in a toy catalog.

I'm glad I had bought that new $16 lockset for the bathroom, which is a room that's nice to lock, like in the movies when you're home alone and naked in the shower and a guy with a machete breaks in. But I can almost kick myself that a little $.35 spring, circling the peg under the end of the pink arrow and extending to the hook on the right, is the reason these five doors won't stay latched and closed. I could see how the lock works too, and now I just need to find a key. I assume all the locks used the same key. Cheap and simple solutions are super!

"Don't mind the cat"

It was an indoors sort of day. So I made a neat improvement to our bathroom door. The door will close but nothing will keep it closed; the knobs didn't turn the latch. Ralph is very curious about closed doors, like most cats, and she loves the sound of all running water. She drinks from the sink, and sometimes from the toilet. I think she's just offended when we close the bathroom door. And no matter which guest is sitting on the throne, she pushes the door open to say hi. Last week I found a lovely new mortise set and with some modification to the setting in the door (notched out the knob and lock holes 1/4" more towards the jamb) I installed it. Everything is flush and it stays closed like a dream! I lock it just because I can. What fun to have privacy from the cat.





















Look! It has a skeleton key! The key is far cooler than the thumb lock. And if I get tired of that I can switch this set to another door that needs latching capability (There are four more with lesser need). I'll try opening the original to see if it's anything I can fix.

I cleaned the paint off the knob hardware by soaking it in hot water with dishsoap, and then vinegar and a toothbrush seemed to put a nice patina on it. The other hardware I've cleaned in the house looks bronzed, but this definitely has remnants of a sealed shiny brass finish. Which maybe gives me a clue to the finish on the missing original light fixtures in the rest of the house? Another house we toured nearby before chosing this one has its original ceiling fixtures, polychromed, flowery brass. I'm waiting to repaint or refinish the door and trim until we decide what to do with the 2006 builder's-special bathroom.

Apartment dwelling vs. owning your own doors

Apartment dwellers have certain habits that house-dwellers do not. When I lived in apartments, I noticed that people often would sit outside in their cars and honk the horn instead of finding a place to park on the street and manually fetching their passenger. In my last apartment, no one seemed to understand that the community recycling bin wasn't for socks and broken umbrellas. Having lived in apartments for the last 7 years and a dorm before that, it didn't seem right to turn the TV up loud enough to hear it in the kitchen, or to talk loudly in the hallways at 2AM. Now I can, and it's great.

We've always had an intercom or keyed entry system, and it has been years since random people could show up at our door. We never had trick-or-treaters. The only people who came to the apartment were people whose visits were planned, or whose arrival at our front door was delayed by the intercom and stairs. Now, it's an old habit of mine that because no one sees what I look like when I'm at home, sometimes I stay in half of my pajamas or wear paint-smeared winter clothing, or even leftover bits of costumey things (I'm a seamstress); whatever I pick up off the floor that speaks "utility" and doesn't come close to matching. These are my cleaning, research and sewing clothes. But people can knock on my door now, wondering if I can do some sewing for them, or could they mow my lawn, or would I like to join their church? And I don't know what to do without the buffer! It would take too long to run and put real clothing on. So I peep through the hole and usually open the door, and always feel embarassed afterward. People frequently ask if they've just woken me (at 2 or 3 in the afternoon). I need to learn.

More photos of Door from a Dumpster

Here's the door, primed and hung. The deadbolt is a fake deadbolt. It fit the old hole.
















Here is a before-and-after. Notice how dark and cramped the little back-porch/laundry room is (that has nothing to do with all the stuff we've crammed in it) and then I open the steel back door (it opens all the way, there's just too much Stuff Meant to Live in a Shed behind it) . Voila! sunlight yet the animals and the AC can't escape. Dreamy fall afternoons here we come! It's like those 20's ads where the housewife is living in bliss because of the gloriousness of her kitchen.


















As awkwardly as that washer and dryer are positioned, this 7-years-long apartment renter does think they are the best thing ever. When we come in from a hard day under the house or bailing water from our car, we can strip at the back door and pop the clothing into the washer.

Someday we'll get an on-demand, wall-mount water heater, move the electric panel, re-do the walls because patching cheap paneling is ugly, and can then move washer/dryer to the left. Half of the wall behind the washer/dryer is a large window opening that's been closed over with concrete board. One of our fantasies is to knock out this wall as well as the adjoining bedroom wall and make one big room. We wouldn't be able to finance this before we become an historic area next year, though. Add some more months-long steps with reviewing comittees and application fees.

I was encouraging Pepper to try out the new door!


Today on Fine Woodworking: Make a plank doorknob!

Wednesday night we got lots of rain here. It seemed normal, like it rains sometimes and you don't think much of it. I went across the river to feed my mom's cat whilst she was away getting nursing continuing certification credits in Las Vegas (yeah, right, educational stuff in Vegas!). Fed the cat, got mom some groceries, came back and suddenly couldn't leave for the rain and lightning. I decided to stay and watch movies, and J called to say the yard was starting to flood so I might as well stay overnight with the cat. We've had some issues with our storm drain, so a little flooding wasn't unexpected. Two hours later he called to say water was up to the steps:
















and that the car had flooded, he couldn't start it, and a neighbor had to pull him away from the drain. Why let the car stay there when the street started to flood I don't know. Actors....So realizing he'd need a car Thursday morning to get to work, I came home and we toweled and mopped out his car until 1:30 AM. Its warning lights are on now, and four buckets of Damp Rid are on the floor. grrrrr..rrr













Here's a photo of one of the funnel clouds on the river that day, about 1 1/2 miles from mom. The structure just behind it is our longest cable bridge:










However, everything is nice and green now. I'm very proud of hanging the square door in the unsquare doorway this afternoon! It's this door. Check out the plank doorknob! It'll suffice until I can find something short and vintagy that won't hit the real knob when the two doors are closed. A stile was starting to crack parallel to the bottom hinge, causing it to bounce instead of close, so I used long deck screws to clamp it to the door. It's not like it's our real door.

door from a dumpster!

This week we dug a path from the side gate past the vegetable garden; the St. Aug grass was mostly dead from chinch bugs anyway. Something mysterious had been sucking the life from the grass and one day I saw a whole bunch of bugs sunning themselves on a wall, trying to tan, I guess. I thought they were odd and harmless and occasionally killed them with homemade insect soap, but today I saw the Garden Q&A in the paper and have taken steps. At least the steps to the hardware store; the poison is sitting on the kitchen counter next to the sprayer. Job for tomorrow.

J cleared out our wood resource pile in the back corner after I discovered carpenter ants in the logs this week. I'd hoped to use them to build an elevated vegetable bed but know now that's foolish. Last week I found a colony of them living in the roots of the fig tree I got from the Jacksonville Fair last year.

Mom and I went dumpster-diving in Springfield, an area of Jacksonville that's undergoing significant rehabbing (see restoration on 7th blog). Most of the stuff that comes from these beautiful old houses isn't fit to be reused, often tagged or peed on or held together with chickenwire and roofing nails, or the original interior parts are long gone and patched over with ancient vinyl flooring and random boards. But we found some exterior doors, the most sturdy one we put in the van. I scraped it, filled the nail holes and sanded & primed one side. The knobs are solid copper. If I can bring myself to do it, I'll knock out the half-door glass pane and install screen instead. Either way, it's going in place of a screen door on the back of the house, to cover up our ugly new steel door from PO.
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