Basement Door

Inspired by all the fun I was having building platforms at the church, and wondering if perhaps one of the boys might want to migrate to the basement during the grandparents' visit this week, I decided to have a little more fun and devise a method for putting a door in the basement room which will one day be James's primary residence.

Not having a real bedroom door lying about unused, I opted to 'borrow' one of the closet doors which has been leaning up against the basement wall for the past year or so, unused because the girls didn't like it. The only difficulty with using this type of bi-fold door is, of course, it requires a track to run on, and the existing metal track from the girls' closet framework is the width of two doors; so instead, I opted to make my own.

Besides, it's more fun to learn a new woodworking technique (or, in my case, make one up).

First, of course, it was necessary to build the header for the doorway since there wasn't one yet. That was rather simple, just putting together a rectangle from 2x4 material and screwing it in place above the doorway.

Sizing the doorway width-wise, it was found that an extra 2x4 was required along one side. Easy. Cut to size and screw in place.

Creating a baseplate for the pivot point on the bottom of the door was supposed to be easy as well, but instead of using a cross-grained (horizontally speaking) piece, I just grabbed a scrap piece from the bucket and used it. Unfortunately, it was vertically-grained, which meant that screwing it down to the floor cracked it. Oh, well, two of the corners held, and it was just a test anyway, so I left it in place.

The top plate was a bit more involved since it would go the length of the top of the door; it needed one pivot point and a slot for the slider. The pivot point was easy: just a 1/4-inch-deep, 1-4-inch-wide hole. The slot was more difficult since it had to start 1-1/2 inches from the pivot point and continue on to the other end. But I eventually figured out to drill another 1/4-inch hole at the starting point and then use the table saw to cut the slot from that point forward. For a prototype, it's not too bad.

At least it will allow James to go into his room and close the door and get the sense of what it will be like to live down there. I'll probably put one of the air mattresses in there tonight to get a better idea of how much room is left with a bed in place. And see if one of the boys wants to try it out for a night.

There's still lots of work to do. The drywall isn't up yet, the ceiling isn't done, the ventilation needs a new plan, we haven't decided on the type of flooring to use (wood laminate versus carpet). And I still need to put up the closet door framing.

But it's progress.