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Labor Day
2 September 2019
We never work on national holidays. Never. But we have a wooden door leading from the bunker into the garage that requires our attention. And since we work six days every week, that door screams for attention on a day like today (when it sees we aren't working).
The Old Plane. Captured at f4.5, 1/125 second and ISO 1600 on an Olympus E-PL1 with an Olympus 12-100mm f4 Pro zoom at 61mm. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
A wooden door tends to swell and shrink depending on the weather. Even if it's sealed with paint or varnish, which this one isn't. So our door swells in width a fraction of an inch so that it bangs against the door frame when we close it.
We've marked the spots where it touches. One above the door knob and one below. We ran a slip of paper down the frame with the door touching to find the spots. But you can see them at night with the garage light on. Very handy confirmation.
We chiseled a little more wood out of a hinge that was a bit proud of the frame, hoping that would solve the problem. It helped but it didn't prevent the door from hitting the frame.
We never work on national holidays. Never. But...
Then we tried a little sanding and that helped, too. The door doesn't hit on some days now. But not on all days.
We could sand more but we want some insurance. For that we'd have to shave a bit of wood off with a plane. We have our grandfather's plane here just for the job.
That is not the work we were thinking of, though.
The work is painting the door. Which is something we don't want to do until we get the door planed, of course.
When we moved here in 2003, this door was installed but not quite to local standards. It should close automatically, for example, because it's a fire door. And it had other issues. It had only been primed (and not very well).
We did change the hinges when we noticed how worn they had become. But we didn't install a springed hinge because there are hot days in which we want the door to remain open, letting the ocean breeze come in through the garage door to cool the place down.
But we never painted. We hung strips of photos on the door instead. You look at the photos not the uneven primer on the door.
But the day is coming when we'll do some work on that door. Not that today is the day. Because, you know, we still have that planing to do.
And today is Labor Day. And we don't work on Labor Day.