Spent some time this afternoon trying to get the weather strip on the door again. Had the kids help me this time too. We had a bit of trouble with caulking the strip on the door. The tube of caulk I had at some point ripped, so the top half of the tube was pretty solid. I cut the entire tube apart and we used the caulk from the bottom and manually placed it on the door before adding the metal strip. Catherine really liked this activity (we might as well have been playing with play dough as far as she was concerned). Catherine then helped with the drilling on the strip right up until the drill ran out of juice.
At this point I just want a drill that's not rechargeable, one I can just plug in somewhere, I'm tired of it always either being out of juice when I need it or having to stop because it runs out. Luckily Quinn took over after that using his manual screw driver. Once we got the strip on and added the bumper bottom (and cut it I might add so there's no hope of returning it) we found out the door wouldn't close with it on.
Guess I shouldn't be surprised, it adds about a quarter inch as you can see from the picture of Quinn cutting it. So we really need to get something similar to what was on the door previous, a sweep of some type. Even though after going by Home Depot and Sears Hardware I've seen nothing that looks like what was on the door before. Guess my last best hope is going to be Lowes, and just like Babylon 5, it will probably fail ("Last Best Hope", anyone? Bueller? Bueller? *sigh*). Not sure what to do if I can't find something at Lowes. I really don't want to replace the floor piece also. Maybe we could just buy a new house that doesn't have this problem. Or maybe I could stop pretending I know what I'm doing when it comes to these at home construction projects.
After we were finishing up with the door, I had to reign Quinn in a bit. He wanted to continue using his drill and saw on various parts of the deck. I told him he couldn't do that. And this idea of him drilling holes and sawing up the deck caught me so off guard that after I told him no, when he asked "Why not?" the only thing I could come up with was "Well... Because!" So much for thinking fast on my feet.
1 comment:
James, a couple of suggestions:
1. A corded drill is good to have. So is a decent cordless drill with at least two batteries--that way you can charge one battery while the other one is in use.
2. You may have enough room for adjustment if you loosen all the hinge screws, hold up on the door so it clears your threshold, and then retighten all the hinge screws.
3. I've recently installed a door sweep that was designed as a u-shaped piece that clamps and screws onto the bottom of the door, so perhaps you can find a similar door sweep/seal. If you went with something like that, you could have more room to adjust up/down versus a seal that attaches onto the bottom of the door.
4. With the u-shape seal or your newly butchered seal, you may need to raise the door slighly upwards. If #2 above doesn't work, see if you can redrill new holes where the hinges are fastened onto the door jamb.
5. Caulk is good.
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