It must have been the sun that got to my head today, as on seeing a dodgy looking door latch that was the required 3 inch for our Victorian doors, I was tempted to fork out for two at 10/- each. The price was cheap and I hadn’t got a tape measure to verify the legnth but, was pretty confident they were the right length.

So there I was all tooled up and I had already had a dry run through when some nob head from ebay sent me 2.5″ instead of the required 3″ so I knew everything firm and it was meant to be a ten minute job at tops.  However, I had not spilled blood and the DIY god was angry and tortured me for my neglect.

As I had half suspected, you just don’t get top quality for ten shillings today and the more I looked at the differences between the old and replacement catch I could see subtle difference that ultimately led to several troubles.  Firstly and most prominently, the replacements were slightly wider which required me chiselling out more of the flimsy door frame to get it to fit.  I am quite sure that had my chisel been sharp I would have appeased the DIY god with fresh blood, but alas it was so blunt it hardly dented the timber.  As a result, I managed to split loose some of the frame: never mind thinks I, nothing a bit of NoMoreNails and panel pins cannot fix especially with a small G clamp holding everything in place.

Annette had returned by this point an in typical womanly manner, kept walking towards the kitchen doorway and then returning to the other side of the room before walking back towards the kitchen.  I have no idea what she was doing as I had already sat down and put Yesterday on. I was too old a hand at these stupid manouevers  to stand waiting for her to stop messing around.

Eventually she was fully out of my way and I went back to the fixing.  No matter how much I flattened the wood with ‘blunty’ I could not quite get the new catch to line up with the old handle hole.  I concluded that it was also marginally shorter than the failed unit. I expect this was due to the continuous conflict in measurements between metric and glorious Imperial sizes.   A couple of quick heavy bashes with the chisel and I had enlarged the hole so both sides fitted and all was well.

 

I paused here to fetch the glue and G clamp from the loft.  I found the glue within seconds and alarm bells rang: where were the G clamps?  Not where they should have been that is for sure.  Ten minutes later I decided they had become lost in the Bilston triangle and  would eventually turn up at some later date when not needed.  I returned downstairs armed with the glue and panel pins to complete the job.  The wood went back on and I only bent one of the four pins so I was reasonably happy, wondering what was to be the next test of my patience.

Of course the holes for the fixing screws on the door handles no longer matched up but frankly my dear, I didn’t give a damn.  The door latch even turned and opened and closed nicely; I was expecting it to jam open or closed.  So I found some new screws and fixed the handles in place. The door closed and stayed put!  Then I tried to open it again and the blasted thing had suddenly become stiff.  At least it is now working again after some twenty years but, my troubles were not yet over and will probably continue for some time until I get used to the change in circumstances.

Testing I could open and close the door from the kitchen side I forgot I had closed the door again and walked smack into it!  🙂  With the busted catch we had all got used to just pushing it open, but all the strong winds blowing under the back door had started pusahing the door open thus the need for the repair.

All I needed was a thin buddy dressed in a bowler hat and it could have been a youtube hit.