Portal Of Doom

Toilets are evil. At least, the ones in our house are. I’m convinced they’re sentient and angry about something, and have for some reason selected me as the target for expressing their resentment.

We have three bathrooms in our house, each with a toilet having its own personality. Upstairs in the kid’s bathroom is “Breezy”, the toidy that is forever discarding its seat. I must have re-attached the seat five times last year. Over in the master suite is “Twitchy”, the latrine that never quite stops running; you have to actually get into the tank to adjust the flapper to seat right so it doesn’t keep on repeating the “endlessly tinkle and loudly refill” pattern all day. And downstairs in the powder room we find “Eager”, the commode that tends to be done with flushing before the job is complete. To get him to behave, you must hold the flush handle down in order for the bowl to empty, or to “drink it up” as Michael puts it.

Guarding Eager’s chambers was an equally evil powder room door. A pocket door. A door that I have dubbed “Surly.”

From the time we moved in, the thing never worked right.

First of all, it was impossible to lock. Pocket doors are not known for presenting a high security level, and this one was no exception. In fact, because the house had settled funny in its twenty-some-odd years, the frame was askew, and even when you closed the door as much as possible, it left a gap big enough to drive a Buick through. There was little hope for the door’s latch to ever span the distance to make contact with the strike plate.

Once my stepdaughter’s dad visited, bringing along Cousin O (stepdaughter’s little half sister, who was no more than two at the time). He stepped into the downstairs restroom for a bit, no doubt believing he had a semblance of privacy. This lasted until Cousin O decided to find out where daddy went, and she opened the door wide, and then scurried off elsewhere to play. From his compromising position he called out frantically to me for help, since I was the only other responsible male in the house. I mercifully shut the door and stood guard.

Eventually, the door went from merely not locking to full-on sticking. It became an ordeal just to cajole it into sliding shut. It required puzzling skills and acrobatics in order to properly align it while simultaneously sliding it along, and even great skill to open it. While this new behavior did incidentally provide a rudimentary form of privacy, it was far from ideal.

After a year or two of door wrestling, I’d had all I could stand.

I decided to take it apart and fix it. How hard could it be?

After removing approximately three thousand four hundred nineteen pieces of trim, bracing and structural lumber to access the door itself, I became quite aware of exactly how hard it could be.

I tilted the door outward and pulled it off its track.

Ah, simple! The rollers were bent! No sweat.

I employed some carefully chosen pliers and clamps to re-straighten the rollers, and then replaced the door.

It rolled smooth as silk, open and shut. And as a bonus, it even closed enough to get the latch to work! Amazing!

Time to put back all the lumber!

I got it all back in place, though the resultant pock marks on the trim made it look a lot like I employed a burlap sack filled with jagged rocks.

But at least it was done. Problem solved.

Then after about two or three days, it started sticking again. Except it was worse.

We endured worse for most of a year, until I decided I needed to try again with the fixing. Because it takes a whole heap of lessons before I learn.

Somehow this time it required the removal of six thousand eight hundred thirty eight pieces of lumber; not sure how I got so lucky the first time I did the job.

But I was eventually able to remove the door, and saw that the rollers were completely shot.

Off to Home Depot for new rollers!

Luckily, they had them.

Replace rollers, adjust and align rollers, replace door, smile, replace lumber, whap thumb with hammer, come this close to issuing extremely foul language. By this point the trim looked like I re-installed it using a shotgun loaded with hatchets and piranhas.

But the door worked great!

For two days.

From there on out, it closed just fine – and then wouldn’t open up. I mean, it really wouldn’t open. Surly’s first new victim was Michael, who upon discovering his surprise jailing, cried frantically until we could let him out. This required the deft application of daddy’s fist against the door in a forceful and relatively angry manner.

Then the inadvertent incarceration happened to his mother. And his sister. And his grandmother. And then me.

So for several weeks, we just went without a door. You could use the bathroom, but only if you didn’t cling to social mores such as discreetness. I could have hung up a sign: “Check your modesty here before you enter.” My personal choice was to run upstairs to take my chances with Twitchy instead. On the plus side, that meant lots of trips up and down the stairs. That counts as exercise, right? There’s a silver lining in every cloud.

In time, the balance of reason and decency outweighed my pride and I called in the handyman.

He came in to inspect, and immediately confided that he hated pocket doors. We chatted about our options, tossing around ideas such as a bi-fold door, curtains, beads, etc., but eventually settling on replacing Surly with a regular hinged door with a knob and a real lock. For actual privacy.

That weekend, he got to work removing the old door and frame, and hanging and finishing a new door. In the space of three hours, he was done with the whole job. Why the heck didn’t I have this done years ago?

This new door I have dubbed “Jeeves,” because he looks proper, and is there solely to do my bidding without giving me any attitude.

Now that I don’t have to go running up and down the stairs any more, I should probably get a stairmaster.