Finally A Productive Day!

The door... finally cut, sanded and assembled!

I finally had a productive day today! It has been a rough week or so of lousy health which caused the installation of the new half bathroom to stall for almost two weeks. Today I managed to get some significant work accomplished!

I was having some cognitive issues first thing this morning so I decided to weigh my options... take another day off to recover or try to accomplish something. In the end, the weather forecast was the determining factor. The moment I saw that the rest of this week is supposed to be rainy, I knew I had to try to accomplish something outdoors in the decent weather.

The thing to accomplish today was cutting up all the pieces for the custom door since this particular project needed to be done outdoors. I cut up all the lumber... shaped all the joints... and then sanded everything. By the time I finished this, it was definitely lunchtime. My stomach had been telling me the same for at least an hour at this point.

After lunch I decided to assemble the entire door in the house. I needed the most level area to use for assembly. I had already built a jig to use for assembling the door and ensuring it is square but it also needed to be situated on level ground. I cleared out the kitchen and placed the saw horses in our kitchen. 

I applied some glue and started assembling... but things weren't going together as easily as I would have liked. I had already dry-fitted everything and it all fit together well. The only thing I can think of which may have contributed to the new tightness of all joints is that when I brought the lumber in the house, the humidity was much higher in the house so the lumber may have swelled a little bit causing pieces to no longer fit together easily. Fun times!

After a bit of persuasion... hammering as hard as I could (and splintering a few pieces of scrap lumber so I didn't ruin the door)... I managed to get the door assembled. It isn't perfect, but it is "acceptable". 

I have three more doors to build so I might swap out this first door with a better door so I can place this door in a less obvious location in the house. For now, however, this door will be used for our new half bathroom.

So, today was a productive day!

I need to head outside to cut up a bunch of 1-1/2" long dowels to use as fasteners. These dowels will be hammered through holes I plan to drill through each of the joints. My plan was for these dowels to be mostly used for decoration but after all the hammering and pounding to get things to fit, I think I need these as actual fasteners!

More to follow...