Homo habilis robinicus - Part II

Woohoo! Yippee! Wowza! Frabjous Day! Calloo! Callay!

I have an officially complete closet! With doors and everything. And, there was only one very minor injury. I wouldn't even mention it, but it involved fire.

So, let me first brag upon my newbie problem-solving skills. Put me up against those New Caledonian crows! I'll take their lunch money!

I had to special order the doors, because the very silly people who planned and built my house made sure the closet doorway was a very strange size. Even with the special order, the doors were a total of four inches off the width of the doorway. But, they're bifold doors. A little space on either side, a little space in the middle, et voila!

Except, the rails the doors' runners are supposed to rest on are something like two and a half inches longer than each door. So, when I go to screw them into the upper doorway, there's an inch overlap.

I closed my eyes and prayed that the patron saint of building materials would smite the sodden idjits who did this to me. Then I went and found a hacksaw. And I hacked off an inch plus a fraction for safety. I would say all by myself, but after five minutes of shrieking noise from the hack saw (which I could only pull through the cut, not push), my father came to check on me and make sure I wasn't killing small animals.

He's very tactful in that he never states his suspicions. He just raises his eyebrows and gives me a hopeful look that I'll fill him in. Which I did. So he helped. He even found a couple of pliers to bend the end back and forth to break it off instead of making me saw through the entire thing. Yay!

So I returned upstairs and found another problem. Though I'd pre-drilled the holes for the screws to hold the rail in place, I couldn't screw the screws in all the way. I went looking for an honest to goodness power screwdriver, since my Dremel has only minor torque, but while I found the screwdriver, there were no bits for it.

So, I used the Dremel to drill further and found the stud and drilled into it.

Hmmm. More smoke. And drywall dust falling on me. And, just because I was wearing glasses and not standing directly underneath it was no reason for me not to get stuff in my eyes. The burning ember which fell hit my left arm, just above the inside of the elbow, and I did an impromptu funky chicken dance. Even though it hit and was immediately knocked off, the ember left a second degree burn the size of a pinhead.

So, that's the official injury. You actually can't tell it apart from any freckles, moles, or pimples at a distance of more than twelve inches or so, but it is an actual construction injury.

And . . . rails went up. The bottom pieces went in, though I had to screw the plate through carpet, which felt very silly until I realized that it was much better than screwing through the floor. It turned out I'd put the two top pegs - one springy peg and one springy peg with a wheel - in the wrong spots. So I had to swap them on both doors.

And they work! Oh, there was a little adjustment here and there. Nothing a capable woman like myself couldn't manage. The doors open and close without falling off. I have all this room in front of my closet and I can't see my clothes! Plus, the bedroom wall on that side looks significantly bigger and is practically begging for some pictures!

But, that's another project for another day.

Why this project? Why today? Because I got my mom her own "closet organization system" (I can't seem to say that without putting it in quotations. I'm not sure why) for Christmas. And I want to install it for her. But there's no way she'll let me do it if I still have my closet doors uninstalled. Also, I'm avoiding writing.

By the way, what do I do with all the leftover parts I didn't need?