Hanging the door

Despite it being a bank holiday and there being an extra day to the weekend, I didn’t really get a lot done this weekend. At least not that you can see. I did go out and buy quite a lot of stuff for the next phase of building, and after that I took care of hanging the door that I made last weekend.

This turned out to be easier than I had thought it would be. Imagine the challenge – hang a door that’s as tall and wide as you are, on a frame, with limited space to manoeuvre, on your own. I wasn’t relishing it. But in the end it wasn’t hard at all.

The key to the successful operation was buying some loose-pin butt hinges from B&Q. Loose-pin hinges do what you’d expect – you can remove the hinge pin and separate the two halves of the hinge. I located the hinges in place on the a-frame, screwed each of them down, and then put the door in place, marking the spots where the hinges needed to be fastened. Then I removed the door, unpinned the hinges, and screwed the other halves to the side of the door. Push the door back into place, the hinge halves pop together, and you drop in the pin. Of course, it wasn’t absolutely that simple. I had to deal with the hinges not closing properly because the screws I was using were not flush with the hinge plates, necessitating a swap-out of screws; one hinge place was a tiny fraction of a mm off, stopping the pin from dropping in – a hammering took care of that; and then, worst of all, I discovered that the door itself didn’t actually fit, at least once the extra width of the hinge plates was taken into account.

I knew going in that the hole wasn’t absolutely straight – the front a-frame leans back a couple of degrees – and I had anticipated and built the door with this in mind, but even so I was a few mm off. Never mind. The frame was sufficiently bendy that I could move it in a few mm, cut back the plywood on top, and finally get the door in place.

 

Next stop was securing it in place. To do this I’d bought a couple of magnetic catches, of the kind you often find in kitchen cupboards. A baton screwed to the door frame straddles the gap between door and a-frame, and in that gap I was able to attach the magnetic plates. With this mechanism in place the door is held shut securely.

Last, but not least, was the small matter of putting on a handle. I used a handle intended for a drawer-front, which, given that the door itself is really light, is more than sturdy enough.

So there you have it – a door that looks like a wall on the inside. Detailing and filling remains to be done, as with all of the shell so far, but at least the sim is now enclosed on three sides.

Next time, I’ll try to see if I can stretch an entire post out of having ‘a bit of a tidy’. Stay tuned 🙂