Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Stairwell to Hell pt. 3

We're almost on the home stretch with the stairwell. We got the new door hung on the weekend. The old door was pretty easy to get out, demo is almost always the easy part. Deb and Ella were at a birthday party at a farm, so I had to do it myself. I already put the door in the frame, I had to cut the top piece 3 times before it fit properly, at least I didn't cut it too short. First, I had to frame the door in a little. I added a 2x4 on each side, using shims to make the 2x4's plumb. I used tapcons to hold everything together at the bottom of the 2x4's, where they attach to concrete. Next I took the door out of the frame, and proped it on some scraps, to get it to more or less the right height, since the floor isn't poured yet. I shimmed the hinge side and got everything plumb, and attached it with 2" galv. finish nails. I've since gone back and added screws, since the frame is painted anyways, for extra strength. The door fits pretty good, considering how out of plumb the wall is. It's out over an inch in five feet, so it going to be a challenge to get the trim to look right.
Next was the plumbing for the floor drains. I'm running them in to an energy dissipation basin, along with all the draintile. Now that the door is in, it was a lot easier to establish a height for the drains. I thought I'd have to lower them, so I'd already re-dug the trench, turns out they were already deep enough. I got all the pipes fit and glued, then covered everything up with about 3" of gravel, and tamped it down. Now it's ready to pour the slab, so I need another 20 bags of concrete. It should be interesting, I haven't done any flatwork before. I've done quite a bit of concrete work, so it shouldn't be too difficult. AndI'll see if I am capable of doing the basement floor next. After the concrete, it's mostly trim work. I'll fill in the gaps with spray foam, and strip and paint the door. So yeah, there's still a lot to do, at least I'm not bumping my head anymore though.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Congrats on getting the door in. I think I've said it before, but for me, framing a door this the hardest thing I've ever done. There are so many ways to screw up, and I usually find one or more of them.

Derek said...

This one went a lot smoother than the upstairs one. I pre-hung the door, then I had to frame it in, so I could fix all the eccentricitys. The upstairs one was another story, it ended up being 1/8" too wide, then I cut probably an 1/8" too much off on the table saw. The old doors in our house have almost no gap, I think they were even beveled to close with less than a 1/16" gap on each side. I could never work to that kind of precision.