I have been doing a lot of house repairs lately. I have installed automatic door closers on many of the doors in our house and have ordered more door closers for some exterior doors. If you are not already familiar with a door closer, it is a spring loaded hinge that attaches the door to the frame. The wider the door opened, the more resistance is felt and the faster the door closes. At this rate of installation, in the next few weeks most of the doors in my house will be nearly impossible to open but they will all close flawlessly. My wife had the most concerned with the bathroom door, as our youngest, Veronica, loves to get into this room and touch/lick everything. I put the highest setting on the door closer for the bathroom. Now most of our guests and young children rather pee in the hallway as opposed to opening the bathroom door. I am still very proud to get that closer installed. It only took 30 different power tools and six quick hours of intense manual labor. No longer will I have to be calling out to people to close a door in my house; all our doors slam shut nearly the moment they're opened. Our electricity bill has never been lower.
When I first looked into automatic door closers, I found a number of videos describing how to perform the installation yourself. These videos showed people smiling, laughing, and having a grand ol time installing door closers. These people described how easy it is to perform this installation. I quickly found out that they were all liars.
The first thing that should have tipped me off was that all the doors and framing displayed in these videos we're perfect geometric shapes. None of the existing doors and framing in my house came close to this ideal.
These Handymen showed how a door installation could be done in a few simple steps. When applying these steps to the doors and framing of my house (which were made in the late 1950s) the number of steps increased exponentially. I found the complexity of hanging a 1950s door roughly equates to that of performing brain surgery on someone born in the 1950s.
With that being said, I did find it to be a challenging and fulfilling experience. Which is why I will be doing it again for my external doors. I guess I am just a glutton for punishment
I personally had so many repairs to do recently to my home, as well. I was considering who to go to, but decided DIY might be a better idea, especially with the quick fixes. It's been quite a journey and half my belongings are in storage units in Richmond VA, but I would do it again in the future. I like having control over how well the project turns out in the end. Sorry to hear you had such a tough time of it!
ReplyDeleteLuckily putting these closers on the back door was not as challenging. Hope your project goes end well. I have two more doors to do, then I am finished.
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