Boy Interrupted

I finally got the first of three kitchen doors hung. Life has brought me a constant series of interruptions over the last 2 or 3 days. I’m just not myself when I’m not able to work on my house. We were down a man at work last week so I had to pull double duty on many days. I also agreed to create a new web site for The Eureka Theater. I had mentioned the other day that I helped a friend to move a 1934 movie projector in to the theater. He and his wife are on the board of the non-profit group that are trying to get the theater up and running again. They know I’m a bit of a pencil necked geek so they asked me if I could do the web site. Naturally I said I could. What was I thinking?

The response just came out of my mouth without thinking. I could have said I don't know how, but I didn't say that. It is the same thought process that leads to me making my own kitchen cabinets and re-wiring the whole house by myself. “Sure, I can do that”. I haven’t created a web site from scratch in over 5 years but they don’t want anything too fancy, so it should be doable.

Anyway, on Thursday after work I went to the board meeting, or maybe I should say “bored” meeting, for the theater group. I had to fill them in on my web master qualifications and listen to all the ideas everyone on the board has for the web site. I now remember why I never made it past the 9th grade. I wasn’t in that room for more than 10 minutes when the blood began to drain from my head. It was like I was in 8th grade social studies all over again. I think it’s the combination of florescent lighting and the smell of vinyl binders that sends me into a semi-comatose state. I was home by 7:30 but I felt like I had taken a tranquilizer.

But today, despite NFL play-offs (Seahawks are winning 17 to 10 with 8:40 left in the 4th), I was able to get the door up. As I wrote the other day I removed the door again and planed down the hinge side of the door. I then mortised the hinges a little deeper and re-hung the door. It’s a good fit but it does need a little tweaking at the bottom. It closes with out scraping but just barely. The final 6-inches needs to be taken in just a wee bit. I can do this with the RO sander.



You can see in the picture how the opening used to be wider. This is how it should look with a single door. Back in the teens or 20s they widened the opening and added a Murphy bed. You are looking at the unfinished dining room side here. The other side is the finished kitchen side. When they widened the opening they cut right through the raised paneled wainscoting. I had only one complete set of panels and 2 half sets. It was enough to extrapolate the original dimensions of the opening and the panels. I had the panels reproduced by The Blue Ox Mill. Eventually this opening will be trimmed out and the walls will be plastered. For now, this is what it looks like.