Stuff-mo-tron

Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Wed, 25 Apr 2007

I got a new copy of Final Cut Express a week or so ago, and between that and some really neat new footage I'd shot with the camera strapped to the side of the bike, I needed to make a new video. So, I did. It's been very well received, once you discount the weird people who need to get a life ("please pronounce centrifugal differently" and "centrifugal force doesn't exist" are my favorites).

How many times can you say "countersteering" before it starts to sound really weird?

Posted at 10:04 permanent link category: /motorcycle

The new bathroom door

So, if you've been to my house, you've certainly seen the broken-down old piece of junk masquerading as a bathroom door. It's one of those cheap, hollow doors which are the favored choice of slumlords and homeowners too strapped or oblivious to get something better.

Some time in its past, before I owned the house, it acquired a hole. I never noticed the hole when I was looking at the house, because when it was on the market, there was a little piece of framed art (needlepoint or something) hanging over the hole. I even thought to myself, "What a weird place to hang a little framed artwork."

The approximately fist-sized hole

The previous owners were a contentious-sounding family of five: mom and dad (dad being the agent who listed the house and parked his 7-series BMW in the little shack of a garage), angry teenage son Tyler (who left his name scrawled in various places in the room that once housed him), rebellious tween-aged daughter (who apparently painted her room entirely in graffitti, which dad made her paint over before the house went on sale -- I wish they'd left it), and infant of some variety (the worst parenthetical note of the lot -- baby's diaper hamper, full and stinking, was left behind after I took possession of the house; two days later it disappeared (after I had possession of the house, mind you!); needless to say I immediately changed the locks). I'm guessing that either of the teenagers was responsible for the hole in the bathroom door.

So, I thought to myself from day one, "Maybe I should get that door fixed." It took me a long time to come around to the idea that I would have to replace it, and then that was at least as daunting as trying to figure out how one would repair a busted hollow door.

Yesterday was my day to take some stuff (notably two other doors and the old kitchen sink) to a place called the Re-Store. They buy and sell used building materials, although they only wanted one door, and not the sink or other door. Ah well. But I figured that as long as I was there, I'd look and see if I could find a new door for the bathroom.

I looked for a few minutes, thoroughly daunted by the collection of perhaps 200+ doors lined up and down a couple of aisles. I figured I'd poke through, not find anything, and have to order a door at Lowes or Home Depot (for which I was expecting to pay about $150). Imagine my surprise when I found a door which was close to the right dimensions, and pulled it out to find a perfect stylistic match to the rest of the doors in my house, and including a mirror on the inside! Now compound that surprise with the pleasure of seeing a $30 pricetag on it, and thinking about the $10 in store credit they'd given me for my old door. It was pretty nice.

So, I bought the door, figuring I'd get to it in a few days. Not to be. I immediately scraped some paint off, then lugged it around to the bathroom to see how well it'd fit. Actually, it was really close. It almost looked like it would fit without trimming... Hmm....

I called my dad, and got his advice on how to proceed with the task ahead of me, and he set me up. I rolled down to Home Depot and rented a hand-planer, and picked up a new doorknob (the old one was of a matching slumlord quality to the hollow door). I cleared out the garage as a workspace, and set the door up on some sawhorses. The planer took a moment to figure out (the depth-of-cut adjustment being somewhat obscure despite the theoretically clear label on the knob). Zip zap, off came a few 32nds from the bottom of the door, and I tried it out.

Around this time, I started to realize just how much a solid wood door with an inset mirror weighed. The door fit pretty well, but wasn't perfect yet, and I knew it'd need several more round-trips between the bathroom and the planer. I eyed the recently-emptied office next to the bathroom speculatively for about two seconds before I trotted off to retrieve the sawhorses and planer.

New door in place, on its hinges

About half an hour of planing and fitting later, the door fit about right, and I set about cutting mortises for the new vintage hinges I'd picked up. My poor solitary wood chisel has definitely seen better days, and the edge was starting to roll under. Of course, I packed all the sharpening supplies weeks ago, so I was left with the little file on my multitool. Cringing a bit, I sharpened a chisel with a fine-tooth file. It worked well enough to keep me going.

The too-long hinge mortise

I set the door up on some shims I had left over from the kitchen project, and marked where the hinges should go. Then it was down again (I can definitely feel my arms this morning) for the chiseling. Fortunately, hinges are very standardized, so I was able to get the door frame set up by simply squaring the corners of the mortises and screwing the new vintage hinges into the existing holes. The door's old hinge mortises were in the wrong place, but provided an excellent guide for cutting the new ones.

Next, I marked and drilled the hinge holes, and got the door up again on shims so I could attach the hinges. Amazingly, it only took about 10 minutes and a lot less grunting and swearing than I had expected to get it hanging and swinging freely.

I broke the lockset out of its packaging (fortunately of the "snap together" dangerplastic instead of the "cut open and reveal self to plastic razor edges" dangerplastic), and read through the instructions real quick. Hmm. 2 and 1/8" hole saw? I cursed a bit under my breath -- I knew I had hole saws, but a 2 and 1/8"? I ran to the two or three places I had them. Nope, the first was a 1 and something. Out to the garage, where I picked up a 2 1/8" hole saw. Amazing! The absolute bane of doing any kind of project like this has always been that I end up spending more time driving back and forth between the store getting stuff I'm missing than I would on doing the work at home had everything been in place to start with.

Oooh, mirror!

I chucked up the serendipitous tool in the drill, and had at it. It was a bit touch-and-go at first, as the door already had an odd oval-shaped doorknob opening, and I was cutting around that. So the first thing to touch wood were the outside teeth on the hole saw, which is not the way it's really supposed to work. I got the kinks worked out, though, and a few minutes later there was a shiny new 2 1/8" hole in the door.

The lockset was simplicity itself to fit, and the door swung shut with a satisfying click! I pulled out the camera and snapped a few shots. I was amazed it went so smoothly. I'd had horrible visions of endless fussing to get everything lined up, and nothing going right. Just the opposite was the case.

It was even pretty cheap. I paid $23 for the door after tax (including my $10 trade-in credit for the old kitchen door). The hinges were $7. The lockset was $15. The planer rental was $14. And that's it! The rest was reused hardware or tools I already had. Grand total for a new bathroom door (and a considerably classier one than I had anticipated being able to get): $60. Whee!

I should have done this years ago.

Posted at 09:48 permanent link category: /misc

Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater