A Pound of Flesh.....

My door is installed! Hazzah!

The installer turned up today to install it, and wouldn't you know, the poor guy was starting his first day installing doors for this company.

He was fabulous, I'm very happy with the service he gave me (I guess the corporate dogma hasn't had a chance to kick in yet), despite all the interesting problems my quirky little flat could throw at him.

It turns out my hinges are part of the door frame (all metal, all the time), and the door frame is kinda back filled with concrete. This meant lots of traipsing up and down stairs for him, to cut and fit the door properly, and the concrete bit made it more difficult for him to drill out a new hole for the deadbolt. I'm not sure how long they usually allow to fit a door, but I'm pretty sure it's not 2.5 to 3 hours! He even helped poke the hinge pins out through the layers of paint so I could take the door off to seal it underneath (which, curiously, he said builders in a lot of new places don't actually do which makes him (and me) cringe).

My new door is in, and I'm excited....

I'd been disillusioned by the project, the roller coaster of my week.

The first excitement was starting by deciding to strip and paint the door jamb before the new door was installed.

It was very closely followed by the frustration of underestimating/not allocating enough time to actually complete the project. So I did about half to three quarters of the job then.

The next day, I decided it would make things a lot easier if I took out the carpet under the door (as planned), and then I'd be able to get alllll the way down to the bottom of the frame.

It was hard work, but mostly fun, especially when I worked out that the best way to get the metal strip that keeps the carpet to the ground at the door up was not by trying to be delicate with it, but to get the claw of the hammer in there and get a bit physical!

The mess was strangely satisfying and very much made me feel that I owned the place, more so than anything else I'd done here.

The carpet was even more manky than I'd realised, and I was delighted to throw even a small piece of it in the bin!

In the process of pulling the carpet up though, I managed to damage the old door even more than it was!!

More of the veneer came off, and the bottom rail of the door kinda fell out...

It was together with masking tape for the last couple of days of it's life!

Anyway, with my powers of destruction having had a chance to stretch their dormant legs, I decided I should get the door jamb finished before the big day (new door installation), arrived.

So on I went, to discover why there were so many layers of paint on the door frame and stuff...

Stripping paint is an AWFUL job, and to make matters worse, I'm not convinced that I helped my cause by stripping it... I thought I'd stripped it pretty well, and sanded it OK... 'till I put some layers back on...

Then, to add insult to injury, after just one coat of the actual paint (on a base coat), I decided to let the cat out of the prison of the bedroom, to discover that the paint I'd put on was enough to make it really hard to shut the door (and it took off some of the paint!!!!!). I then noticed the horridly wonky cut, which explained all kinds of jams!

I left it at that point, and decided to wait for the new door cut by a person who sees the merits of a straight line.

Now, I have to seal and paint the door, finish of the door jamb, and hope that there is room enough in my gorgeously straight cut door to allow for all those layers of paint!!