I wanted to hang a door in the dressing room. Our house layout is quite different and of course I like it. Kim and I have a small bedroom, the kids (all of them) have a small bedroom and the master suite (with built in closet) is the dressing room for all. If someone wants to change they can go into shower room and that still leaves the sink and mirrors open to everyone. It would be nice to have a door with a lock on the walk in closet. There was a door hanging around the kids bedroom, unattached. I took it and hung it but it was too big. That is the first time I realized that doors are different sizes. So I went to Home Depot and they had doors for about $25. The door had a handle hole, but there was more to hanging the door than attaching the hinges. The door was a standard 28 inches. I measured the doorway and it seemed to by a little more than 27 1/2 inches. The guy at home depot said that I would have to chisel (yes with a chisel) out the places for the hinges. I marked the hinges and started using the chisel. The first thing I discovered was that the door was paper not wood. That is ok except that the chisel made a mess. I got out the rotary tool (Dremel) and it worked a lot better. I made one smart decision and tried to hang the door before starting on the other hinge. This is when I discovered that indeed the door was a little too big. I had kind of hoped that having the hinge embedded in the door would have made the difference, but after taking the hinge off and placing the door up to the doorframe I realized this was not going to fit. Close, but not close enough. I looked on the Internet for a term that sound somewhat correct. Plane Door. Up came up a bunch of results including a story about a man trying to open the door of a plane while it was up in the air. There were examples of the old fashion hand planers and there were electric planers and there was a Dremel tool attachment. I looked online and found the Dremel attachment at Amazon for $19. I then went to Home Depot. They didn’t have the Dremel tool attachment. Darn. They had hand planers that ranged from $10 to $40. They also had motorized ones for over $100. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t even know if anything would work on this paper door. I decided to drop by Harbor Freight. You can get pretty cheap tools there. Of course you get what you pay for. I found an electric planer for $30. I asked if I could return it if it was garbage and they said I could. I got home and read the instructions. I then tried it out on the door. It worked pretty good. It took several passes since it just shaves off a little at a time. The planer is adjustable so I can shave up 1/16th. I did several passes at 1/12th fitting it up to the door every time. When it fit really tight I shaved off 1/48th. I like the way it fits, now I need to attach the hinges. There is another problem because the doorknob hole is in a different place than the original door. I did make one mistake and that was to use the planer in the dressing room. I really didn’t want to drag the door from the garage every time I wanted to try a fit. It made a pretty big mess. The mess I made from that first attempt to chisel was almost all planed out. So now I am going to just use the rotary tool. I don’t know if I will find another use for the planer. It seems like a 1 time use tool. I can’t see using the planer again, but I could be wrong. Now in every project I have to learn at least one thing. I hope it is just one thing because learning usually means I made a mistake. I thought I had learned a lot in this project. Then several days later it dawned on me why the door looked funny even though it functions just fine. Look at the pictures below of two different doors. Dot you spot the mistake? Do you know what I did wrong?
Hanging a door
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