Construction: The Loft Rails

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Maria Langer

One of the last big projects to finish prior to final inspection.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

The living space in my home is small — less than 1200 square feet. I designed it to have a vaulted ceiling which climbs from about 10 feet on the north side to 18-20 feet on the south side. (One of these days, I’ll measure it.) My floor plan is simple, with a large great room on the east side and the bedroom, bathroom, and laundry room on the west side. A hallway on the south side connects these two spaces.

Here’s one of my working floor plans with some measurements. North is down in this image.

Because it made absolutely no sense to have 20-foot ceilings in the hallway and the bedroom closet and because I needed some way to access at least two of the four clear story windows at the top of the south wall (so I could open and close them for ventilation), I added a “storage loft” to the design. You can see it as the gray space in the above floor plan. While I was doing the design work, I envisioned this as a sort of shelf where I could store things that I didn’t want in the garage. But when the framing and drywall work was done, I wound up with a nice-sized room that I figured I’d use for my library — I have a lot of books, including 85 that I wrote — with a futon I had brought from Arizona that could be used for guests. Although the ceiling on the north side of the loft was only about 5-1/2 feet, there was plenty of headspace at the rest of the loft.

That put the loft into a sort of limbo area as far as the county’s building inspectors were concerned. It was clearly not a shelf, but it also was not a room. This was good and bad for me. Good, because I didn’t have to worry about putting in stairs, which I had not designed space for and bad because I still had to surround the entire loft with a guardrail that met county code specifications for height (at least 32″), openings (no larger than 4″), and durability (able to support the weight of a 250 pound person leaning against it. I basically had to build a rail like the one I’d put around my deck outside.

I was not looking forward to this job and, like most jobs I don’t want to do, I put it off. I put it off for a long time. Part of me was trying to figure out how to do it so it would be aesthetically pleasing — I didn’t want anything ugly in my home. The other part of me was just too damn tired of building. I’d already done a bunch of huge projects: I’d wired my shed, my shop, and my living space; I did 95% of the electrical finish work; I’d tiled the bathroom floor; I’d laid 1,200 square feet of Pergo flooring; I’d laid the composite decking and built rails for my 600 square foot deck; I’d set up shelves in various closets and rooms throughout my home; and I’d gotten about 75% finished with baseboard and door trim — a project that’s still in progress. I was worn out.

But putting a job off doesn’t make it go away. This was a job I needed to get done if I wanted a certificate of occupancy for my home — which I did. So by autumn 2015, I was trying to move it to the front burner of my life.

The Hard Part: Design

The hard part about the job was coming up with a solution that would not only be aesthetically pleasing but also allow airflow — some of my HVAC ductwork is up on the loft — be affordable, and be relatively easy to construct. Making that difficult was the fact that the larger of the two spaces was not rectangular, as shown in the above floor plan. I needed to make some adjustments during the framing stage to accommodate a ships ladder to access the loft. For various reasons, that required a sort of cut out. That meant that if I wanted to enclose the entire space, I’d have to have a rail that followed that cutout, with a gate at the top of the ladder.

I have to say that I wasted a lot of time thinking about that. And making measurements. And stressing over how I was going to adequately support each vertical post I needed when I didn’t really have anything to fasten it to. In the end, I decided to just run the rail straight across the top of the ladder, cutting off some of the loft’s floor space to form shelves. Since most of that space was in the low ceilinged area anyway, it wasn’t a big deal.

The railing system I originally bought. Ick.

As for how I’d build it, I started by looking at the easiest solution: a packaged railing system. Home Depot had one and I actually ordered enough to do the easier of the two rails: the one over the shelf in the bedroom. This was clearly a “shelf” — it was only 4 feet wide, over my closet and the linen closet — but because it was accessible from the larger part of the loft, it also had to be safeguarded with a rail. I bought a white metal railing kit on a special order from Home Depot and even managed to bring it all up to the part of the loft where it would be installed.

It sat there for at least four months. I just couldn’t bring myself to start installing it.

Why? It was ugly. It was designed for outdoors and it was white metal. Everything inside my building was mellow earth tones and wood. Why the hell would I put an ugly white metal railing inside my home?

Another, more attractive but also more costly option for the railing.

I went to Marson and Marson, the folks who had sold me my doors and had also provided much of the building materials — trusses, lumber, posts, etc. — that the builders had used to build the shell of my home. Rita, the special order lady, priced up another solution: horizontal wire railings. The wire could be combined with hemlock — the same wood I’d chosen for my doors and door trim — for vertical supports and top rails to give me the look I wanted. But by the time she priced up the wire, the special hardware and tools needed to secure it, I was looking at thousands of dollars and a ton of work.

When I balked, Rita suggested another possibility to work with the wood: powder coated “hog panels” from a company called Wild Hog Railing. This would give me essentially the same look I had on my deck outside, but the powder-coated metal would be a bit more polished looking than galvanized wire. I ordered up some panels with black powder coating and then started to think about holding them all together.

The wood was easy. My doors were hemlock and I’d been trimming them with hemlock trim pieces I bought at Home Depot and cut to size. I’d finished the doors and the trim around them with Danish oil (at Rita’s suggestion) and I really liked the way they looked. On a trip to Home Depot, I realized that they sold hemlock lumber — 2x4s, 4x4s, etc. I’d use 2x4s for the top rail, bottom rail, and side rails affixed to the walls. I’d use 4x4s to create support posts on either side of the gate, in the main loft corner, and at the center of the bedroom loft.

Fixing the vertical supports to the walls wasn’t a big deal — I’d find studs or use anchors. But the four 4×4 posts were a problem. I needed a way to fix them to the floor. I’d been looking for appropriate hardware for months and had been coming up empty. But the folks at Marson came to the rescue. They suggested a pair of brackets for each post that could be attached with lag screws to the 4×4 and through the Pergo floor to the underlying wood floor. I bought eight of the brackets and a box of lag bolts.

Trouble was, the hardware was metal colored. The wire for the railings would be black. When I pointed this out to the guy at Marson who was helping me, he suggested getting them powder coated. So on my way home, I dropped them off at Cascade Powder Coating. They had a bit of a backlog, but thought they could have them done within two weeks. That worked fine for me, since I didn’t have the wire panels yet anyway. The total cost to powder coat the brackets and lag bolts: $70.

Putting It All Together

Once I’d assembled the panels, hardware, and lumber, it was just a matter of doing a lot of measuring, cutting, and assembling.

I figured that I’d fit the panels into a grove I’d cut on the inside of the supports. So I went out and bought a dado saw blade set. For my table saw. If you’re not familiar with dado saws, they basically make it possible to cut a groove of just about any width into a piece of wood. But on assembling my new dado blades to give me the right width, I realized that the plate covering the blades didn’t have enough of a gap for the blades. Some research made it clear why: my table saw could not be used with dado blades. This is one of the drawbacks of buying low-end, home improvement grade tools.

I had the guide set so that I could run the wood through once in each direction to create two grooves like this.

I realized that I could simulate a dado set by running each piece of wood through the table saw’s regular blade two or three times, shifted a tiny bit over for each pass. So that’s what I did. It wasn’t difficult, but it certainly wasn’t fun. And, when I had to do the 11-foot long 2×4 length for my bedroom loft’s top rail, I had to wait until I had company who wasn’t afraid of table saws. (There was no way I could get that long piece through by myself.) My electrician friend Tom and one of his buddies, who’d come by to help me with an outlet for my new freezer, helped guide that long piece through the saw three times.

I then adjusted the guide and ran the wood through a third time to cut away the piece between the two grooves.

Here’s the process I followed to prepare each part of the wood frame:

Measure the space to be fitted. Then measure again. Do something else and then come back and measure one more time.
Cut a length of wood to size.
Run the wood through the saw blade 3 times to cut the groove. I got really good at setting the guide bar on my saw.
Sand the length of wood with 80 grit and 160 grit sandpaper using an orbital sander. I have a belt sander but don’t like to use it.
Wipe all the sawdust off the wood with a damp cloth and allow to dry.
Coat the exposed sides of the wood with 2-3 coats of Danish oil. Allow to dry between each coat.

Prepping the metal was more straightforward: all I had to do was cut it. Fortunately, I had a 36″ bolt cutter I’d used to cut the fencing for my chicken yard. Still, it was hard work to cut it accurately. And if I screwed up, I’d be looking at buying another $50 panel. So I was very careful.

The gate was my proof of concept. I think it came out pretty good.

I assembled all the panels with screws, with two in each corner. I drilled pilot holes in every single one. The gate was the first panel I finished, since it did not have to be affixed to the wall or floor. In a way, it was a proof of concept. I was pleased with the way it turned out.

The rest of the rail had to be installed in place. That meant doing a lot of measuring on the loft, cutting and finishing in my ground-floor shop, and then carrying pieces up the stairs and the ladder I’d put in place for temporary access. By this time, it was mid-December and cold downstairs. It was hard to stay motivated. For some reason, I got it in my head that I wanted final inspection done before year-end, so that drove me and I got a lot done very quickly.

I worked through the main loft in just a few days. I had it down to a science. For each section, I followed these steps:

Install the vertical posts against the walls. I used 2x4s and ran the screws through the groove so they’d be invisible in the finished product.
Here’s the post at the top of the ladder. And yes, I screwed right through the Pergo. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but at that point, I really didn’t care.
Install the freestanding posts. I used 4x4s and bolted each one in using two brackets and 8 lag bolts.
Install the bottom rail. I used a pair of blocks cut from 2x4s to prop up the bottom rails while I screwed them into place.
Measure, measure, measure, and cut the wire panels.
Slide the cut panel into place.
Set the top rail over the posts and wire panels and screw it into place.

Here’s the first panel installed.

I drilled pilot holes for every single screw I put in. I was not interested in splitting wood or stripping screws. I wanted it done right the first time. I had my drill set up with two drill bits I could quickly swap out and my impact driver set up with a screw driver bit and a socket that could be easily switched out. (Someone I knew once used to say that any job is easy if you have the right tools. It’s one of the few things he said that are worth remembering.) Because these tools are cordless, I didn’t have to deal with wires up there. But I did do a lot of crawling around on the floor.

I finished the main loft area just before I went away for Christmas. I go cross-country skiing up the Methow for Christmas. It’s become a bit of a tradition for me — this was my third Christmas away. Just me and Penny, winging it.

Here’s what the main loft’s rails looked like before I went away for Christmas. The gate is installed and ajar. As you can see, I still have a bit of trim to do up there in the shelf area.

When I got back, I still had the bedroom loft rail to do. All I had installed was the side and central vertical posts. The wood was grooved and cut, but hadn’t been sanded or oiled. But by this point, I’d run out of steam and was thinking only about my upcoming snowbirding trip. It was unlikely any inspector would come during the week between Christmas and New Year. So any thoughts I had about having the project finished by the end of the year were gone. I figured that if it waited this long, it could wait a little longer.

So I left everything just as it was and went on my trip.

The finished loft rail in my bedroom. The top rail is one continuous piece 130 inches long. It’s the one I needed help getting through the saw three times.

My trip included a week home, mostly to relieve my house-sitter so she could go on a trip and to check on things. But while I was home that last week in January, I figured I may as well finish up the rail. It only took about 6 hours split over two days. And then I was done.

It’s a funny thing about the jobs I’ve done at my home. Before I even start, I spend a lot of time thinking about them, planning them out to minimize the chances of doing them wrong and then having to redo them. Then I eventually get to work and, in many cases, work on them for days or weeks or even longer. And then one day, I’m just done. It feels weird to be done because I’ve been so consumed with the project, thinking about it and working on it for so long that there’s suddenly a hole in my life when I don’t have it to work on anymore.

But then I get on to the next project and it’s all forgotten.

Construction: Some Memorabilia

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Maria Langer

It might sound goofy, but I framed the pants I wore throughout most of my construction project.

My pants didn’t look nearly as ratty here as they ended up.

Back in January, 2015, in a blog post about wiring my home, I shared a photo of myself dressed for winter wiring work inside my future home. In the photo, I was wearing a pair of Levi’s that would become my official work pants. Over the following months, I’d slowly but surely destroy them simply by wearing them while working.

They became my work pants when I wiped spray form insulation on them. Do you know the stuff I’m talking about? It comes in a can and you spray it through a narrow straw into cracks. I was working in the autumn of 2014 with my friend Barbara, spraying foam into the cracks around my windows and the doors to my deck. I got some of the spray on my finger and wiped it on my pants. Not sure why I did that — I should have known that it would never come off. It became a crusty yellow stain on the outside of my left thigh.

The pants, which I’d gotten from my brother for Christmas in 2012, already had a patched hole in the left thigh. The hole had manifested itself early on, almost as if by design. I know it’s fashionable — or maybe it was fashionable? — to have torn jeans, but I prefer mine intact. But this hole was just the first of many in that leg. (They don’t seem to make jeans the way they used to.) I patched them with iron-on patches as quickly as they appeared, but I never seemed to keep up with them.

Here’s what the jeans looked like on May 7, 2015.

On May 7, I shared another photo of the jeans, this time on Facebook. My update text read:

Heavily patched and washed three times each week, I’m determined to make these designated work pants last until my home is done. I might frame them when I’m done.

I think I was kidding about the framing.

Here’s a closeup of the torn up leg on June 1, 2015.

On June 1, I shared a closeup of the torn pants leg stretched out on my red leather sofa. I couldn’t seem to prevent them from ripping. By this point, the fabric on the legs and butt was so thin that I had to be careful putting them on. I said:

It’s a good thing this project is almost done — I don’t think these pants would last through many more washings.

Somewhere along the line, I’d managed to get paint on them. That was okay. The best thing about work pants is that you don’t have to worry about getting them dirty. They become the rag you don’t have handy when you need a rag. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad painted houses as a second job. His old police work pants became his painting pants and were soon covered with all colors of paint.

I took what I thought would be the final photo of the jeans in August 2015. You can see the original yellow insulation stain on the back side of the left leg’s outer seam.

By August 31, it was all over — even though my construction project wasn’t. (To be fair, it was mostly done and I’d gone into a slow motion completion mode fueled by procrastination, which I excel at.) I shared a photo on Facebook with the comment:

After much soul- searching, I have decided to permanently retire my work pants.

The comments came quickly.

One person (Mandy H) suggested cutting them up and sewing them together as a bag. But the fabric was so thin, I didn’t think it would last, even as a bag.

Another person (Mike B) suggested:

Frame them as a memento of your hard work to build your new home and life.

I replied that I’d thought about that but that I had enough stuff. (I actually have far more than enough stuff.)

He replied:

Nothing signifies the amount of hard work than worn out work pants.

I certainly couldn’t argue with that. The pants had seen every aspect of my construction project.

Another person (Jorja) said:

Save them…………they won’t take up much space………you worked hard……….they deserve to stay………..a while longer!

The clincher was when another friend (Shirley) added:

Yeah, I’m thinking you should frame them as part of your house building memories. :-)

I decided to look into framing them. I’d need a shadowbox frame for them, so I went to Craft Warehouse, which had done some framing for me before. The price quote I got gave me serious sticker shock: $350. Ouch!

So I went online. I wound up spending about half that for a shadowbox frame “kit” that included the completely assembled frame with glass, felt backing, and hanging hardware. The box came about two weeks later.

And sat in my garage for a few months.

Meanwhile, I’d washed the pants one final time and had folded them neatly to wait for when I had time to frame them.

Last week, I did some garage cleaning and stumbled upon the box with the frame in it. I brought it upstairs and opened it. It looked like a big project.

I put off doing it for a few days.

I needed a photo, I decided. A photo to put the pants in context. I found the photo at the top of this blog post and emailed it to the local Walgreens photo department. I ordered a 5×7 print. I picked it up the next day.

Yesterday, I got tired of seeing the frame standing in the corner of my living room. I laid it out on my big dining table, disassembled it, and stretched out the pants. I put a fold in one leg to make room for the photo. I attached the jeans to the felt board by punching holes in them and running black wire ties behind them, out of sight. I used tape behind the photo to attach it to the felt and stood back to admire my work.

It looked boring. Flat.

I thought about what I could add to liven it up. How about a piece of Pergo under that photo? After all, I’d been wearing them when I laid 1200 square feet of Pergo laminated flooring.

And wire, of course. I’d done about 95% of the wiring in my home. How many days had I spent on the floor, creating grounding wire pigtails for outlets to satisfy the electrical inspector? One of those pigtails would be nice to show.

I went down into my shop and started poking around at material scraps.

The deck. I’d laid about 600 square feet of composite decking material. Maybe a piece of that? I’d thrown most of the scraps away, but still had a piece I could cut for a cross-section.

And quarter round trim? I was still laying that around the house so there were plenty of tiny scraps around.

And some of the many different types of screws? Wall screws, wood screws, deck screws, self-tapping screws. T-25 heads, T-15 heads, Philips heads. I grabbed a few.

And a sanding wheel from my orbital sander? I’d been doing a lot of sanding lately, working on my loft rails. I had at least a dozen spent wheels in the trash.

And of course, the stub of a pencil which seldom seemed handy when I needed it. I found two small ones in a pencil jar on my workbench and grabbed one of them.

Here’s the final piece, standing against the wall before hanging.

I began laying out all these things on the black felt “canvas.” I liked the way it was looking. But how to attach them? I had a small glue gun someplace.

I lost hours looking for it and getting distracted by other things. Just when I though I’d lost it and reached for a tube of silicone sealer, I decided to look into the toolbox drawer labeled “Adhesives.” Duh. I’d put it away. I brought it upstairs and got to work.

When I was done, it looked a lot busier. But not too busy, I think.

The pants, hung on my wall.

I already knew where I was going to hang it. Although my first thought was to hang them in the bedroom, on the wall I was standing in front of in the photo at the top of this blog post, I wanted to put it in a place where everyone would see them, a place where they could become a conversation piece. There was a big piece of empty wall over the stairs that was the right size and shape. I did some measuring and used the heavy-duty picture hanger that had come with the frame to hang the finished piece there.

It looked good.

I’m very glad that my friends — especially Mike, Jorja, and Shirley — talked me into keeping these jeans and making them into a piece of personal memorabilia. I put a lot of work into my home and I’m still amazed, every day, at how good it came out. These pants, framed with a few other mementos of that work, will remind me what it took to get it done.

Once free to do what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it, I made it happen. I’ll remember that every time I see this piece.

Would I do it again? A few months ago, I would have said no. But now I’m starting to think that this was just practice for my next home.

A Word about Pole Building Costs

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Maria Langer

In answer to an email message.

The other day, I got the following email message from a reader:

Thank you for posting the information on your home. We are interested in doing something similar and were wondering if you had any ball park cost you could share on your project.

I’ve been blogging about the construction of my new home, which was built using post-frame (“pole building”) construction, since May 20, 2014. I’ve even created a series of daily time-lapse movies that show how the building was built.

Although each day’s time-lapse can be viewed separately on this blog, I’m pretty sure this is the only place you can find the compilation of all videos.

A lot of people have asked me why I chose this type of construction. After all, at the end of the day I’m living in a metal building. While it isn’t unattractive, it doesn’t have what most folks would consider “curb appeal.” Surely I could have made something nicer looking with normal framing construction.

As this photo hints, the reason I have such a big RV garage is because I have two big recreational vehicles to put into it. And yes, they do both fit inside.

That could be true, but I seriously doubt I could have done it on the same budget. After all, my building has a 60 x 48 footprint with a high roof peak about 30 feet up. That’s a lot of 2 x 4s. And let’s not forget the fact that the RV garage portion of the building has a 16 foot internal clearance with no central posts for support. It took some seriously engineered trusses to make that work. And how about the vaulted ceilings in the living space? Do you know how thick the five glulam beams that support the roof over that area are?

Of course, I have no answer for this person’s question. Every building is different, every builder has different pricing and materials. Before choosing a builder, I got quotes from four of them and they ranged in price from $50K to $250K. Were they all trying to sell me the same thing? I don’t think so.

My building was (obviously) custom, built to my specifications with design assistance from the builder, Western Ranch Buildings. I don’t think they’d ever done a building with such a large open space inside it (24 x 48 x 16) and I know for certain that they’d never done one with so many windows (20). I’m extremely happy with the way it turned out and have absolutely no complaints about the builder, who was completely professional, flexible, helpful, and patient with me. And this was my first (and likely only) time as a general contractor.

Of course, Western Ranch only provided the building shell. I handled everything inside either myself or by hiring subcontractors. There was additional cost for all that. So reporting what I spent on just the building shell wouldn’t offer a complete picture of my building cost. And reporting what I spent on the entire project would include all the high-end finishing touches such as the vaulted ceiling, oversized ceiling fans, custom kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, Pergo flooring, soaking tub, glass block shower stall, etc., etc.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: The cost of any building project depends on the contractor(s), the materials, the type of construction, the size, and the features. My project is unique, so reporting its costs would be meaningless. If you’re interested in building your own pole building, come up with a plan and submit it to several builders. See what they say it’ll cost. Western Ranch was right on the money with their estimates — a reputable builder in your area should be, too.

A(nother) Foggy Winter Morning

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Maria Langer

Typically beautiful.

I’m always up before sunrise in the winter and I usually only have a vague idea of what the sky is like outside until it gets light enough to see. In the winter months, this area is prone to fog that usually forms over the Columbia River and drifts through the valley. Sometimes it builds enough to completely envelope me at The Aerie, which is about 700 feet above the river’s elevation, surrounding me with a damp white cloud. Other times, it fills the valley below me, making me feel as if the few homes I can see are the only ones on earth.

While December isn’t nearly as foggy as January can be, we’ve been having more than the average number of foggy mornings — and days — lately. This morning is one of them.

As I took my first look outside this morning, I suddenly recalled a morning about a year ago. I’d been living in my RV, the “mobile mansion,” in my big RV garage, waiting to continue work on my home upstairs. For some reason, I decided to go upstairs and take a look out at the view. It was cold in the garage — probably in the 30s — and it wasn’t much warmer upstairs, which was completely open to the RV garage and uninsulated. The walls were no more than framed skeletons of what would be fleshed out later with drywall, the floor was still dusty plywood. I went down what would be my hallway into what would be my bedroom. I opened the door to the non-existent deck and looked out.

And I saw something remarkably like what I saw this morning.

Not a very good photo of what’s outside this morning — my iPhone doesn’t handle low-light situations very well. But you get the idea. Wenatchee is somewhere in the middle of this shot, under the cloud.

Later, if the sun breaks through the higher clouds — which is unlikely today based on the forecast of a “wintery mix” all day — various parts of the view will glow in the sunlight. I have photos like that, too.

Anyway, last year, when I looked out at this view, I tried to imagine what it would be like to roll out of bed and see this from my bedroom window. My imagination just couldn’t do the job. Living here, having this ever-changing vista part of my daily life, is something that simply can’t be imagined. I feel so amazingly fortunate to have found this place and rebuilt my life here.

Not long after that December morning, I moved forward with my project. I had my HVAC system installed. I got to work on the wiring. I hired plumbers. I contracted with the insulation/drywall/painting guys to put my walls in. I bought plumbing fixtures. I laid tile in the bathroom and Pergo throughout the rest of the space. I did the job of a general contractor to get my home built. You can read the details in my numerous new home construction posts.

Now my home is just about done. My deck, finished for months, is a perfect place to sit and look out over the view. The photo above was taken from the same place I looked out last December — but from the rail around the deck instead of from a piece of plywood balanced on the deck supports.

The folks who read this blog and see my Twitter and Facebook posts might be sick of me sharing this view. But I can’t ever get sick of it. I wish I could share it with everyone.

Construction: The Fire Doors

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Maria Langer

And their doorknobs.

Because my home shares space with my garage — like most houses do, I guess — I had to separate my garage from my living space with a fire door. This is a special heavy-duty door designed to resist fire. So if my Jeep decides to spontaneously combust while it’s sitting in the garage, the resulting fire will take a bit longer to get through the door. Because my garage is under my living space, I also needed special drywall in the ceiling of the garage for pretty much the same reason.

(Of course, I think it would make more sense to put a smoke detector in the garage that could be heard in the living space. But although I’m required to have two smoke detectors in my 1,152 square foot home — one in my bedroom and one in my great room less than 30 feet away — I’m not required to have any in my 2,880 square foot garage, home to a total of seven motor vehicles that the building code makers think are dangerous enough to require the special doors and ceiling. Go figure. And yes, I will be putting smoke detectors down there anyway. I don’t need a building code to know what’s smart to do.)

Here’s a view down the stairs to my entry vestibule. As you can see in this photo, it still needs some work: trim around the front door, additional drywall over each of the fire doors, and a tile or slate floor.

I needed two fire doors because there are two doors at the foot of my living space stairs into the garage space. Even though the garage is currently one big space, I’m not convinced it’ll stay that way. I might someday put a wall between the car garage and RV garage/shop area. That’s why I have two doors. The one on the right goes into the car garage and the one on the left goes into the RV garage.

Getting the Doors In

As you might imagine, fire doors are more costly than the standard doors people normally put in their homes and custom size or swing fire doors are even more costly. I was fortunate in that my framer made a door opening that would accept a stock fire door. Although I would have preferred the door to swing differently on one of the doors, I decided that for a $300 savings, I could live with the same swing on both doors. And since the pre-hung doors that Home Depot had in stock the day I bought them were a bit scuffed up, I saved another 20%. So they cost me just over $150 each. (In comparison, the hemlock doors with glass inserts I installed in my home cost an average of about $300 each.)

The doors were solid and, therefore, heavy. The Home Depot guys loaded the doors into the back of my pickup, I drove home, and I parked the truck in the garage. Then I used my Jeep to get around until some contractors, who’d come to do other work — drywall? plumbing? HVAC? — helped me offload them and set them aside in the garage.

A week or two later, my friend Steve came by for breakfast and helped me install the doors. It went relatively smoothly, although we did have a bit of a struggle getting the automatic closure features, which is required by the building code, to work properly.

The doors were white and ugly and when the weather warmed up, I often kept the one to the RV garage, which I use most, propped open. Until the Cricket Wars began. After that, it was usually closed.

Procrastination Strikes Again

The doors and frames were pre-drilled for doorknobs and deadbolts, so I bought a set that included two of each, keyed alike. For the next few months, that package of door hardware moved all around my garage. It had fallen into my procrastination black hole — a place where the things I need to do go instead of getting done. I had no excuse to put it off — after all, I had the tools and the know-how — but I did.

A Thermocube supplies power to its outlets when temperatures dip to 35°F and turns off power when temperatures rise back to 45°F.

Until this past weekend. The temperatures outside got stuck in the 20s during the day. The temperatures inside my garage dipped into the 30s — cold enough to trigger the Thermocube outlet attached to a ceramic space heater beside my water pipes. The entrance area at the foot of my stairs got very cold and drafty. I realized that some of the draft was coming in through the four doorknob/lock holes on the fire doors.

And this is the cost of procrastination. Instead of installing them on a nice, comfortable summer or autumn day, I got stuck doing it on the coldest day (so far) of the early winter season. I had to put a space heater in the entrance vestibule and let it run for an hour just to get the temperature down there near 60°F.

Then I put on a sweatshirt, fetched the tools I needed, and got to work. I had a bit of a problem with the first doorknob — turns out I was trying to use the wrong screws (duh) — and then a bigger problem when the deadbolt didn’t line up with the doorframe hardware. That required a bit of grinding with my Dremel. The second door went much smoother. In all, it took about an hour to finish and, when I was done, my fingers were numb.

But it worked. The draft stopped. This morning, it’s much warmer down in the entrance vestibule.

Two Way Locks

The doorknob and deadbolt between my entrance vestibule and car garage.

Look closely at the door knob and deadbolt in the photo. Notice anything unusual?

You should. Instead of both key sides being on the same side of the door, I set it up so there’s a key side on each side of the door. That means that for one lock, you can unlock it without a key on the vestibule side and for the other lock, you can unlock it without a key on the garage side.

Why the hell would I do that?

I did this for security reasons. With this setup, I can lock the doors so that someone in the garage can’t get into my living space without a key. Or I can lock the doors so that someone in the living space can’t get into the garage without a key. If I lock all locks, you’d need a key to get between the living space and the garage no matter which side of the door you were on.

Of course, the deadbolt is a more secure lock than the doorknob lock, which could probably be bumped open (although I admit I haven’t tried it). But any lock is more secure than no lock just as anyone wanting to break in will get in no matter what kind of lock is employed.

What is it that they say? Locks keep honest people honest.

Whatever.

I had to put something in those holes to stop the draft. I had to have a doorknob to “click” the door closed to satisfy building inspectors. Although it took me at least six months to get around to it, I finally got the job done.

Another item to check off my to-do list.

An Eclectic Mind

Web site and blog for Maria Langer, writer, video producer, jewelry artist, boat captain, and helicopter pilot. Blogging since 2004.

Tag Archives: make it happen