As a home maintenance handyman, I experienced many different situations where my country-boy expertise would see me through the repairs — and after that, it was learn as you go.
After about 10 years, I got pretty smug about doing most of the repairs I was asked to do, so when an elderly customer called to have a dog door installed in the side door of her garage, I said, “Sure, I’ll come right out.” Seems that her daughter was coming to visit with her dog, Shadow, and she wanted the dog to be able to come inside.
Well, I had installed quite a few dog doors, and figured I could do this real quick and get on to my next job. When I arrived, I asked if I could use the workshop at the back of the house. My customer’s late husband had been a contractor and built the house, and I knew he had sawhorses back there.
I took the door off its hinges and went back to where the shop was. Set up the sawhorses, put the door on top, laid the pattern for the dog door and cut it out. I had just put the dog door on and started screwing it down when I realized that I had really messed up.
Just then the customer came out to see how I was doing. I asked her, “How high can Shadow jump?” Well, she got this puzzled look on her face and with her hand indicated about 3 feet. I said, “That’s not high enough.”
I had cut the dog door in the upper part of the door! I suggested that I could put a pane of glass in the upper part for a window, and cut the dog door in the lower part where it belonged, but she said no — her husband had put that door in “and if he had wanted a window in the garage, he would have built it himself.”
So I proceeded to look for a door that would fit. After checking at several places, I finally had to settle for a blank door I could cut to size. After measuring and cutting to size, I mortised the hinges in and drilled holes for the lock set. The door mounted perfectly on the hinges but, when I went to close it, it was a quarter-inch too wide.
Back to the sawhorses. Had to trim the side where the hinges were, because the lock set holes on the other side were already drilled. After trimming and resetting the hinges (and gashing my thumb in the process), I cut out the dog door, in the bottom this time. It fit perfectly.
I finally made it home that evening about $250 poorer, very tired and with a gashed thumb. Would have been better off and come out ahead by staying in bed all day. Lessons relearned: “Haste makes waste” and “Measure twice, cut once.”
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