New Garage Door

We've needed to replace our heavy solid-wood vehicle door since we moved in almost seven (7) years ago. The automatic door opener crapped out a couple of years ago and since then it has been manual operation only. Finally I could stand in no more!

We had to get up early on install day because I needed to get the mustang out of the garage....and it wasn't running at the time. I know from experience that I can't push the car up the hill, so I enlisted Amy Sheep and between us we used the RAV4 and a thick rope to tow the mustang out to the street, and then rolled in behind the truck. The new door comes flat packed on a big trailer:

First step is to move the new parts into the now empty garage. Then the old door and all the rails were removed and loaded onto the trailer. 

After that I left it to my installer and he did a fantastic job:

The automatic door opener is tucked into the corner of the garage, so there is no central chain or any of that nonsense to bang yer 'ead on.

Guest Room Remodel

I think I mentioned that Quinn Sheep moved out to UCSC. What I didn't mention was that Samuel Sheep took over Q's old bedroom quicker than a fart moves through a vacuum. Which means we've finally got a space we can make into a proper, grown-up guest room. We started with repairing the walls and going through the usual color selection process...there were a LOT of pin holes to fill.

The most interesting part of the makeover was the closet doors. I started with a coat of paint, but what we really wanted to do was change the hardware.

This is a picture of the new door "pull" from the back. I need to cut a recess into each door for the pull to mount into.

The first step it to make a template from plywood. I drew a rectangle and used a 5/8" Forstner bit to drill appropriately radiused holes in each corner; the edge of each hole just touches the perimeter of the rectangle.

Excess material was cut away with a jigsaw...

After minor adjustment with a file the pull is a perfect fit:

The next step is to trim the plywood template so that the hole is precisely in the middle. This is important for avoiding mistakes when aligning the template on the closet door. 

I used the hand held router to gouge out the recess in each door. This wouldn't work very well with anything other than a solid door...

After installation and re-hanging doors....I did the doors at Cameron Sheep's bedroom closet at the same time.

This is how the new guest room came out. We still need to get some artwork hung in here...