It has been a while since I've complained about the deck project. Here is some of the latest and greatest.
I am somewhat unhappy about the French door installation. It is my fault for not knowing what to be asking for, and for panicking and asking my friend to help me, who I knew would do it in the easiest manner, and not the best manner. I should have gotten a door with extended jams, that way I could mount the jams to the wood framing of the house, and the fronts of the doors would have been flush with the brickwork. since I got normal width jams, I think about 4 inches wide, we mounted the jams flush to the inner wall of the house, thus they are set back from the brick face and will not open 180 degrees against the outer wall. I didn't know there existed extended jams. the reason I chose to mount it to the wood framing rather than the brick exterior, was for two reasons. I knew it would have been a bitch and a half to mount it to the bricks. Secondly, maybe I'm paranoid, but the way the bricks were falling out while I was hammer drilling into them for the deck ledger board, I had serious concerns that the constant opening and closing of the doors would have eventually shook some of the bricks loose that the door was secured to. The fact that the door now sits behind the brick face, means that there is a significant gap all around the door between the backs of the brick face and the door. My friend who does things fast and easy wants to just bend some Aluminum and calk it into place along the vertical gaps, and slip a piece of stainless steel under the bottom threshold and over the bricks, and calk it in place. My brother-in-law says sure, you can do it that way, but it will look like shit. He told me how he would do it. He is a contractor and his specialty is fine trim work, so I trust his advice. The first part is easy. Just get some 1 by cedar planks and glue them to the brick and tack a few nails in nearer the jam to keep everything tight, then calk some nice seems along the edge. Sounds reasonable. I could even rout a decorative edge along the outer edge of the cedar. the bottom sounds much more difficult, so of course, that interests me because I am a masochist. Basically, I have to break out the tops of the bricks all along the door opening, this is a soldier course so I actually have to break the bricks. I break them down at least two inches. Then I pour a cement sill in there, right up to the bottom of the door, forming a cement sill or threshold. OK, there is one harder version of this, but I am not quite that crazy. He said if I wanted the nice brick look, I could then take a bunch of bricks, cut them to length, and lay them in there sideways and mortar them in place rather than use a cement step. My excuse is that I need all the bricks we ripped out to brick up the back door once all the rest of this is done. So I learned a lesson. Well, two lessons. You don't know what you don't know, and that will always bight you in the ass. Secondly, if you want something to look good, never ask a guy who fixes up section 8 housing for help. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081
