Frustrated with Poor Quality Products

You can clearly see the joint failing here.

I'm frustrated... and exhausted. That's not a good combination.  

As many of you have probably already read in previous blog entries, we've been searching for wood screen doors for months. Actually, we've been on the hunt for wood screen doors since last summer! 

To save on time and energy, rather than build my own doors from scratch, I opted to buy a good quality stock door to customize. 

I could (and, in hindsight, I should) have made my own doors, completely, but opted for a stock door to save some much needed time and energy. I have very little energy due to my health and I have very little time due to the very short summer season here in Vermont. Our summer is packed solid with renovations which must be accomplished. 

I had to add these screws to hold the joints together.

I have a kitchen and living room to renovate and this includes new windows, new insulation and new exterior siding. The summer season is far too short for even someone with boundless energy... yet I only have the energy for a few hours of work on a good health day... and the good health days are becoming quite rare. So, we opted to buy stock screen doors and adapt them to our design...

What absolute junk! What a waste of time! What a waste of energy! What a waste of money! They've been painted and installed for only a little more than a week yet they are already falling apart!  


Today was the second time I had to remove them from the hinges to repair them and today's repair was significant. When I laid the front screen door on my sawhorses, I immediately noticed wet, swollen wood and joints coming apart. 

So I added two screws into each joint... 12 screws in all...
then repainted and I'll need to re-caulk as well.

I could get into all the details of why and how this happened but the short answer is that these are poorly designed and poorly built doors (garbage, actually).

In the end, after a week and a half of frustration and a waste of precious energy, I should have just built my own custom doors. I know that my doors would last at least 20 years. I also now know that I saved myself no time nor energy by buying a stock wood door as my base door. 

This idea (a shortcut with stock doors) didn't save me any time... it didn't save me any energy... and I'm left with garbage for screen doors after all this work and frustration.

I need a nap and it's only 10am...