The Screen Door

I'm not sure how much of this I already blogged about, but I will retell the story while I am on a blogging role.

So back in summer it was blisteringly hot, so hot Erin and I bought two air conditioners. The first one we bought was a central unit hooked into the main furnace/duct work. About ten minutes after we signed, and in our defense we signed while under the duress of the extreme heat, we realized there was no room in the budget for the AC, actually there was no room in the budget for food, but that was another issue. So sheepishly we called up the AC guy and had him rip up the contract, and we settled back into our sticky sofa misery. A little under a week later we purchased a used in window unit. It cost $50, and was in pretty good condition. This produced a near instant improvement in living conditions. What it didn't resolve was sleeping conditions, because it wouldn't fit in the bedroom window. The nightly routine became, come home, open all windows and doors with screens, cook dinner, retreat to AC room until bed time, crawl to bedroom and hope the house has cooled down. At this point we resolved, we should get a screen door to increase air flow through the main floor.

It took a few weeks to get organized, and when we did we priced out and made plans to buy and build from scratch a screen door. This was based on a price of about $200 for a very basic prefab unit. So first stop was my favorite store, Lee Valley, we purchased all the hardware, hinges and etc to make the screen door. Next step Revy to load up on lumber, screen, and other things not carried by Lee Valley. Now we got everything we needed from the hardware store in the cart, then we headed down the screen aisle, when what should we find… An end of line, fancy prefab door, marked down from $250+ to $50. How could we say no, it was complete and a lot nicer then what I was going to make. So we proceeded with all the returning hoo haa, and walked out with our new door. The trip home with it handing on the top of the car was a little funny, but we got it home without issue.

The following weeks saw difficult tool selection, and trimming work to be done to the door, followed by painting, and finally hanging. I still need to install an internal door knob, and a little bit of touch up fitting, and painting, but all and all it looks great! So here are some cool pictures of it, and some finished pictures of the garden. Enjoy.