The doors - stages one and two

As March progressed, so did my impatience! Himself and the wonderful Pete had spent many, many hours debating how to make the tea house doors. We'd had sliding doors that slid from the corner, leaving the whole corner open, we'd had sliding doors that slid from the middle of both sides of the building, we'd had swinging doors, inward opening doors, outward opening doors, one pair of each sort, solid doors, panelled doors, half panelled doors, clear doors, opaque doors ....if fact everything but REAL doors!

I knew the endless discussions were more to do with a reluctance to get started in case it all went "horribly wrong" (- as Himself the pessimist is prone to saying!), but eventually my albeit limited patience ran out, I had a hissy fit, stamped my metaphorical foot and told 'em just to flippin' well get on with it!!! *ahem, coughs in a slightly embarrassed way*

The upshot of my temper tantrum was that Himself suddenly found the ideal solution to the door dilema! He decided to do one trial door first though ......just in case it did all go horribly wrong!

He assured me it was all in the design detail:

For some reason known only to Himself and Pete, they couldn't have a solid piece of wood and pop a realtively simple tenon joint into it. The frame is one piece of wood, split into two down its length, with complicated joints that I don't even know the names of at relevant places down its length! The two long pieces are then glued back together again.

Checking for fit.

Very neat!

Himself got to use some of his clamps - happy days!

The basic frame at the end of stage one.

Next came the 'simple' cross pieces.....

Door stage two!

Trying it for fit ...can't be too carefull :)

Happy with the style and fit of the door, Himself went into mass production mode in the garage and I didn't see him for three weeks!

A total of eight doors meant an awful lot of pieces - most of them with complicated joints in.

Seven door kits ready for assembly!

And in the next episode of 'How to build a Tea House in the most complicated way possible', we'll see what Himself can do with polycarbonate panels!

Suggestions on a postcard please! :)

201.10 Addendum.

Himself has finally read one of my blog posts!!! He's asked me to point out that the reason he split the door frames is not because he wanted to make more work for himself (!), but because the frames are very thin for the height of the doors. Wood bends, so by splitting the wood and turning one piece round ( a part of the process I didn't know about as he was locked in the garage at the time!), the tendency of the 2 pieces to bend cancel each other out and the door stays straight ...so there you go! :)