Took A Chance And Built A Door

Today’s daily prompt says ~ What’s the biggest chance you ever took? Did it work out? Do tell!

If you have read my post I Am High Class Trailer Trash then you already know I am in the process of remodeling my home. I am not a carpenter, but I am the type of person to do it myself. I have to be, I can’t really afford to hire people to do it for me.  So things get a little confusing sometimes and I make mistakes.

On the first day of spring vacation from college I decided to start working on my dining room with the goal to have it done before returning to college a week later. Ha ha ha, that was a month ago and I am still far from done. I had just finished hanging and finishing drywall when I realized I messed up. I needed a new door and I am raising the floor 5/8 of an inch with new sub-flooring.  So I was loosing that 5/8 of an inch from the door space.

Now my choices was to just remove two small pieces of the drywall and custom make the door or buy a door and remove quite a bit more drywall so I could move the opening up in the house to fit the door. I was out on the road one day last years, scrapping, when I approached a gentleman who was cleaning his garage. He asked me to take a pretty large stack of pine one by sixes off of his hands. I did not know what I would use them for, but they were definitely usable. They had been used once before, but they were still very nice.  So, with no experience, I decided to take that chance and custom make a door with these boards. I knew exactly what I wanted and the dining room was my project, but for this part I had to ask my fiance for help. I could already see the door in my head, but was not sure how to do it. I pulled out my Photo Shop program and drew a diagram with measurements and all.

After watching a few videos on youtube we were ready to roll. We cut a piece of plywood to the size of the door we wanted, and layered it with the pine boards on each side. We cut boards, glued, and screwed, filled holes, and oh my goodness the sanding took us days. This entire time there is a huge hole in my wall covered with a piece of plywood. This weekend we will be hanging a door. It is not going to be a easy task the door weighs about two hundred pounds, probably more. We took a chance at doing something big we have not done before and it was a success.

Here is a picture of the door on it’s side. It is not 100% done for it needs a couple more layers of polyurethane; however, we decided to put that on after it was hung. Sorry for the mess around it. It is a work in process.