| For
those of you that have visited us in the last 6-months, know we have a
few problems at our house. First of all, due to the placement of
animals in the back yard we have a collection of flies that congregate
on the back porch. Actually the probably congregate elsewhere as
well, but there are defiantly on the porch. They also like to
flock to the back door and when the door is opened many of them fly
into the house. This issue is one that has irked me for a while,
but my efforts to keep the back door closed have thus far been futile. |
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The next issue
is that our dog has learned to open up the back door. Our doors
have handles on them that stick out 90 degrees to the rotating shaft
and the dog will jump up on the door and open it and let itself
in. This also bothers me and on more than one occasion we have
come home to find the dog in the house with the door wide open.
The solution to this has been to keep the back door locked at all
times. you can also guess how well that has worked... |
| We
have looked into putting on a screen door on the back, but with limited
success. Finally I took a day and tried to fix these two issues
by installing a screen door. First I measured the opening and
then went to the computer to find someone that would make a door to fit
my frame. With the stucco wrapped around the door frame and the
doors inset-the "normal" sized door doesn't fit the opening. On the computer, I visited many different sites that had doors, but non seemed to work. On Lowe's.com I started conversing with an on-line salesman about my problems. The salesman found the perfect door that would work, when I clicked on the link guess what - the opening was 1.5" too small. I pointed this out to them and they found me another one. On the computer it seemed to work. They wanted to sell it to me immediately and just go pick it up to, "make sure that it was in stock when I picked it up." I didn't fall for it, but physically went down to look for myself. |
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When I arrived
I looked and look at the different doors and the only one that fit the
online dimensions was for a 34" door. We have a 36" door.
This wasn't going to work. I went over to the in-store saleswoman
and talked her about the problem and her knowledge was limited to what
her computer told her. As I already exhausted that information I
explained the issue. Her solution was to just try and order a 34"
door and see if it would indeed fit. You know, you can always take it back if it doesn't fit. Never mind that it will be 3-weeks until it arrives. |
| Well
again, I wasn't sold. We drove down to Home Depot and had the
same conversation with a salesman there. This time I found
someone who knew what they were talking about. Once I explained
the issue I was informed that one of the $100 doors would not fit, but
for $800 they could make a custom dimensional door for my application. We thanked him for his time and bought one of their cheap doors with the intention of modifying it to fit. |
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Once we got
home I took the door and cut apart the frame. I also cut the
welds off holding the metal expanded metal and then cut out 3/4" of the
horizontal frame pieces. After I cleaned it up a bit, I welded it
back together making the door close to 1" shorter than it originally
started. |
| This
seemed to do the trick. The modified door seemed to fit the
frame, but I should have cut out just a bit more. Once the
installation was complete it rubs a bit on the jam but is still
functional. |
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The kids helped me install the door, but they were not interested in helping with the modification of the door itself. |
| After
installation was complete, the dog seemed to figure out that it could
not enter the house any more and hasn't even tried to jump up on the
door to gain access to the house. I don't know why, but it seems like every small project I seem to embark on ends up turning into a much bigger project before it is done. As you might notice in the photo - I forgot to cut down the top member of the casing and so it has not been installed yet. It is now on my list of things to do to cut it down to size when I find a little bit of free time. |
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