The title is a LIE! The door was never actually stuck, it just was harder to open and close than it is now.
Mike spent much of the weekend working in the basement. There are eight support beams that need to be put in to raise the sinking wall in our dining room back up. Prior to us buying this house someone, probably to open up the basement, took out a pretty major supporting wall in the basement. This wall had several crucial spots where it provided support and the result of it being taken down is that a wall that divides several rooms on the main floor is sinking. Mike plans to jack the wall back up into place with support beams and then rebuild the missing wall.
It’s a very worthwhile, tedious and frustrating project!
He got one of the beams in place over the weekend. He’d thought he’d be able to place a few of them but this one took all weekend! There was a T-section, support boards that come together in a plus sign, if you will, and he found that someone had cut all four of them out. He decided to do that one first since it was a major support spot and, whoo_boy did he struggle getting it done. When Boo was first starting to move around on her own I took my giant green glass lamps out of the living room and put them in the basement so there’d be no chance she’d break them and hurt herself. These lamps are gorgeous but very old and fragile. And now they’re gone! Shattered! /Cries!
He had a jack in place over top of the support beam, slowly working to jack that part of the sinking wall back up, when all of a sudden the jack shot out of place so fast Mike said the jack was a blur. It shot across the basement and shattered my lamps. If it’d shot out the other side it, in the least, most likely would have broken Mike’s nose so I really shouldn’t complain.
Anyway, the room beside my office turned into a junk room. It’s on the other side of the sinking wall and the door to that room has always been hardish to open. When we first moved in Bear wanted that room for his bedroom and every night, if he got up to eat or use the bathroom or … whatever, just opening that door would wake me. (I sleep upstairs above that room.) Since, every kid who’s had that room (we often play musical bedrooms when someone moves in or out) has woken me in the middle of the night when they went in and out of the bedroom.
Since it became a ‘junk room’ I started storing extra diapers and baby wipes on a bookcase in there. I needed more wipes over the weekend and opened the door to grab a pack. I had shut the door behind me, haven retrieved the wipes, and was a good three to four steps away from the junk room when it hit me. I stopped, dead in my tracks, and asked (loudly), “Who’s been messing with that door?? It barely made a noise when I opened and shut it!”
It’s crazy how easy that door is to open and close now! He only jacked the sinking wall up an inch or two and already we’re feeling the effects. The door frame isn’t crooked anymore (something I’d honestly never thought about) and so the door opens and closes with ease now! How cool is that? On the downish side, we have to lift up on the front door now, a door that’s across the house from this wall, to get the deadbolt to move into place. That’s weird!
It’s going to take a bit longer than we’d expected to get this wall built in the basement but, once it’s done, the walls in the dining room come out so he can do the electrical and put in new walls. The runs he’s on right now (for work) are giving him more time at home so he’s finally able to start this monster project I threw us into back in February. I’d wanted to paint the dining room walls and started ripping the older than dirt wall paper down. I had no idea how involved painting those walls would be but, hopefully, it’ll be done by the new year.
/Crossingfingers!