How It All Works

I anticipated a certain level of toil associated with the house move, but didn’t quite comprehend the 24/7 nature of it all.  Wiring, plumbing, building, repairing, decorating is only just getting into full swing and my life, from getting out of bed to falling back into it is dominated by it, and the To-Do List stretches off into the distance, far longer than the recollection of any tasks completed.  I am sixty six years of age.  I said to my wife this morning that I want to be done with all of this by the time I reach seventy.  She laughed.  Not in a good way.

Perhaps I can explain how it all works.  This morning it was my intention to paint ceilings.  I got out paint brushes and rollers, I covered every conceivable surface with cloths just before my wife said, “Can you just change the hinges on that door before you start?”  I didn’t say “I started bloody ages ago!”  I said “Of course,” and set about it.  Three hinges per door means that I can change one at a time without having to take the door down…

…Although the screws came out of the frame easily enough, I could not remove them from the door.  I tried a full range of cross-head screw drivers, I tried a slot-head, I tried hammering, I tried a thin sheet of rubber between screw head and screwdriver, I tried swearing, I tried impotently jumping up and down on the spot.  Eventually I did manage to remove them (slightly oversized slot-head tapped gently into the screw, since you ask) having first taken the door down from the frame and this is what I found: the screws, having obviously seen service though a number of re-hangings had, understandably, worked a little loose and the solution that offered itself to my predecessor was glue.  A screw with PVA between its threads and the wood that surrounds it is surprisingly difficult to remove.  Nine of them is a trial too far.  The anticipation of a further eight doors so affixed fills me with dread.

But that’s for another day because half of this one has now passed and I have not yet set brush to plasterboard.  It can only be a matter of minutes before my wife appears and says “I thought you were going to paint those ceilings this morning.”

The door that came down, by the way, having been previously planed beyond the thickness of its skeleton frame at the bottom, resembles little more than a textured hardboard and corrugated cardboard sandwich with the crust cut off.  If The Big Bad wolf should come to call, he’d better be careful that he doesn’t inhale too deeply before he huffs and puffs or it may well fall in on him.  And yes, I know that I exaggerate.  It is an internal door: the wolf would not be blowing on it.  And he could blow all he liked on the actual front door.  If he can get the key to work he is a better man than I.

Anyway, having glued matchwood into each of the previous screw holes, I hung the door back up.  It opens.  When it is not open, it shuts.  I don’t suppose that you can really ask for much more from a door.

The ceilings will have to wait until tomorrow now or, if I am forced to refit the handle to the door – which could possibly lead to a full roof reconstruction or, more likely, severe recriminations resulting from the discovery that I have fitted it on the hinge side – sometime next year.  At least, I hope, some time before I am seventy…