Termites and doors

Thursday I opened the side door to our garage and discovered a pile of termite droppings under the door. The bottom of the door and its frame have been a little rotted for years, so I guess it's not completely a surprise. Still, it's never a good thing to find termite droppings.

Took the door off the frame and prodded it and the frame with a screwdriver. Frame is fine. Bottom of the door disintegrates into paint flakes and a huge pile of termite droppings. Ok, it could be worse. The termites are in one of the few parts of the house that I can replace myself.

Carefully measured the doorframe. 32" wide by 81" tall. About half an inch of space between the frame and the studs. Then, off to Home Depot to buy a new door. Lots to choose from. Found a nice steel-lined door with a window. They come in 32" and 36" widths. Great, 32" is what I need. Steel-lined doors are heavy, but managed to get it into the mini-van.

Got home and ripped out the old doorframe. Broke the handle of my favorite framing hammer in the process. Finished the demolition with my favorite 3' crowbar; in retrospect I should have started with the big guns.

Now, all I need to do is prop up the new door, shim it and align it, and screw it in.

Except the new doorframe doesn't fit.

Measured the doorframe. Aha, when you buy a 32" door, they mean the door is 32" wide. The frame adds another inch on each side. So I had a 34" doorframe and a 33" hole to put it in.

But with a 3' crowbar and a 16-pound sledgehammer, all things are possible (0r at least, removable). Widened the opening a couple inches, including shifting a stud and pounding back the stucco and concrete. Not quite how I'd envisioned my afternoon. On the bright side, hitting things with a sledgehammer is a good way to get out the frustration, um, of needing to hit things with a sledgehammer.

Several hours of pounding and shimming later, the door is in place. Now, all I needed to do was screw it in with the included 2.5" screws. Which are all apparently made of cheap steel, or the studs in the garage are really hard, or both. The screws snapped off or strip partway into the frame. Not only does this remove support from the door hinges, but it bows the frame inwards so that the door doesn't close.

Gpt out hacksaw. Removed blade from hacksaw. Slid blade in between shim and now-bowed-inward doorframe. Cut screws. Repeated on other side of shim. Door frame is now unbowed.

Found 4 nice sturdier 3" screws in my box-o-parts. Now we're back in business. Never throw out good screws. Added deadbold and doorknob from old door. And at the early hour of 10:30pm, the door is in!

Did the stucco-ing over the next day and a half. Stucco is great stuff - like wet sand. Takes an hour or so to set. I bet it's possible to build a great (and permanent) sandcastle out of it. Must bring a couple of bags of stucco to the beach next time. If I build at low tide, the stucco should be hard by the time the tide comes back in. And woe to the teenagers who try to kick over my sandcastle...

Lego spider

It's spring, and the black widow spiders are coming out. Here's an enormous one I "found" in our shed out back...

It was quite upset when I brought it in the house for some pictures...

So I squashed it...

600 pieces of Lego, build time about 8 hours.