Office Progress

The most frustrating thing about Saturdays is realizing, after working all day long, how incredibly little has been accomplished.

We're going to be spending many, many hours on this office. It's our 'test case', where we try out a few things to see how this basement project will go. For example, the walls are 4x8 modules that can be individually moved. The floor panels are 2x2, again removable. The wiring is done down a middle 'spine' with junction boxes for all secondary circuits.

The price to be paid for modularity is, of course, time. It takes a while to plan it all out so that it's done right.

We ordered prehung doors: one single for the stair entry, and a double set for the den entry. Naturally, they're French in style (i.e. glass-panelled), to maximize the amount of light for that back-basement room.

They were estimated to be delivered within seven to ten days, but it only took five. And since we don't have a vehicle large enough to carry home the double-doors, which are no less than sixty-five inches wide, we had to rent one of the trucks at the hardware store.

It wasn't in the original plan to spend Saturday hanging doors, but that's the way it turned out. Most of the time was spent leveling, of course. The actual opening was eighty-something inches, so there was quite a bit of filler to put in. In fact, we had to put another 2x6 on one side of the jamb to pad it out because there was no way the shims would work otherwise. And then it turns out that the original 2x6 against which we mounted the new 2x6, was twisted so badly that it had to be shimmed as well.

Then of course the doors (and jamb) were too tall. We had assumed when we ordered the doors that the man behind the counter understood that we were giving him the size of the current frame opening; he naturally assumed that we were giving him the size of the doors we wished to order. So we got doors which were 80.75 inches in height, along with jambs of 0.75 inches, to fit in a door frame of 80.75 inches. Which meant that both the doors and the jamb had to be trimmed down a bit.

But that was only additional time. Beginning at nine in the morning, it only took until eight in the evening until the doors were properly hung.

Progress!