Speaking of home improvement...

Man, as soon as you find a better, faster, cheaper, tidier way to do one thing (in this case, priming the bathroom canbinets -- with spray primer!), you find a harder, dirtier, slower way to do something else (in this case, re-hang some closet doors.

FYI, I don't think anyone will enjoy reading this, but I'm feeling bitchy, and I earned the right to kvetch about it.

I swear, the closet dors haven't hung right since I moved in. I had my dad come over and we jury rigged them by putting a little wedge underneath one of the doors' lower bracket things to hoist it up, because the problem then was that the roller thingie wouldn't stay in the top track because it was too low. I had tried to fix it myself with no luck, and this did a temporary job. But then mom and I installed flooring in that room. Since the flooring added a little more than 1/4" of height, we thought we could use the same holes to put the screws back into. Unfortunately, one of the walls is nothing more than panelling, so thin that the old holes were near-useless, because they got stripped when we pulled the old screws out. The other wall is masonry, so it, too, was useless (the surrounding masonry crumbles into powder, so there's no chance of getting a screw back in there either.


On to today, when my to-do list says "re-hang closet doors." Easy enough, right? Two minutes -- drill the new holes, hang the doors. NO SUCH LUCK. The panelling is so weak I can't get screws to stay in it at all! I drill new holes, put new screws in, hang the door (which is, by the way, a three-part, complicated, sweaty, up and down on a stepladder process*), and go to close it (it folds) and promptly hear both the tearing of screws out of the wall and the ramming of the track device into the paper wall-cover of the front of the doors! Well, after about three more tries and the application of some anchors (and re-hanging the fricking door every time!), the right-hand door works. I hang the left-hand door (the one in the masonry) after about three tries (and three re-hangings!) and it moves smoothly in its track -- until it hits the moulding! So I get up there and shave off the moulding. What the hell, right? I've got paint. But then I try to close both the doors simultaneously, and it will not happen. They crash into each other at the bottom while the top is still gaping. I figure out that it's the left door hanging funny, so I take it off again, unscrew the peg thing on the bottom (after my experiments with Dad, we found out that you can adjust the height by screwing or unscrewing it), and re-hang it. But it's not quite right, so I have to trial-and-error it (which means re-hanging the doors every time!) about three more times. Finally, finally, they both work. And I'm a sweaty, dusty, cobwebby mess. Sheesh.

*For anyone who's interested (no one), the doors are two hinged panels each. On the top of the panel closest to the wall, there is a peg on a spring that collapses and springs back up into place. It fits into a stationary hole in the top of the doorjamb. On the panel that moves there is a springy peg with a wheel on top that fits into a track on the top of the doorjamb so that it can swing back and forth. On the bottom of the panel nearest the wall is another peg (non-springy) that anchors into a hole in a bracket on the floor. So to hang the door, you must first put the floor peg in place, then push the top peg down and slide it into its place and let it spring up, then guide the wheel into the track -- all of which would be easier if you could see what you were doing, didn't have to climb up and down a stepladder, the doors were light, and there was no contortionism involved in crawling inside the closet to see the floor peg while simultaneously lifting and setting down the (heavy) doors.