Comment by macNchz
4 days ago
One of my first real DIY projects during a summer in college nearly 20 years ago was replacing the rotted out basement bulkhead doors on the ~120 year old house I grew up in. I took measurements of the old ones, bought some nice tongue-and-groove cedar and high-quality hardware, and built the new doors in the garage. When they were fully assembled, I carried them over to install on the old stone frame. I took off the old ones, put mine in their place...and they didn't fit properly at all.
Momentarily baffled, I realized that, despite appearances, the old frame was actually not square, in fact it was a parallelogram. I'd measured the height and width and assumed it was square. The previous (experienced) carpenter who'd built the doors I was replacing had clearly noticed this, and simply allowed for the misalignment in his design. He built perfectly square-appearing doors that mounted to the not-square frame. I had to go back and rework mine considerably for them to fit without looking ridiculous. They're still there and holding up well, but I also still think of this lesson on a regular basis in my day to day life now.
You notice this when you start to learn drawing (at least I did) - it's not that you don't know how to draw, say a horse, it's that you have no idea what a horse really looks like. Ordinarily you just jump to a whole lot of conclusions.
The classic example is that nobody can remember the basic shape of a bicycle: https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on...
I feel this in my soul. I thought I could replace a door in a day, but months of fiddling, I discovered by frame is not only a parallelogram but it literally shifts by over an inch between seasons. (~100yr old house 2nd floor)
I lived in a flat in a 200-ish-year-old building when I was at uni. Lovely flat, handy for uni, handy for work, near the shops, near a park, flatmates were pretty okay, comfortable, airy, well-lit, and warm.
Here's the thing we - a flat full of nerdy tech students - never figured out.
The walls in two of the bedrooms (including mine) were perfectly plumb, all four walls straight. Bookshelves lined up nicely with the walls. The floor was flat and level.
But the room was 10cm narrower at the ceiling.
Have you ever been to The Mystery Spot[1]? It is a fun tourist trap with all sorts of conundrums like that.
[1]: https://www.mysteryspot.com/
obviously a small space-time anomaly. Nothing to be alarmed about. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.
1 reply →
That’s why most doors come prehung in a jamb. Just add shims and then cover them with trim.
I wonder if this could all be solved if doors are triangles instead of quadrilaterals.
Or round, like the hobbits do
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You guys have doors?
Check if it's the hinges that are yielding.
they can lean at all sort of weird angles too, experienced finish carpenter are worth their weight in gold