Carriage House Doors

Bob bought steel hinges and hardware when he was down in Guatemala and brought it home. We then transported it to Tunkhannock. Bob's big job was to build the Carriage House doors (12' high). First we had to build the subfloor on the back of the Cottage to have a place to work. Then Bob had to build a perpendicular surface on which to mount the doors onto the Carriage House (not an insignificant job given that it is in no way square). Then Bob laid out the larch boards (from the tree cut on the property), which were warped and attached all sorts of braces and drilled lots of lag bolts. By the time he was done, these were heavy, strong doors. We loaded them into the pickup and drove them to the Carriage House where we set them up and attached ropes to the top so they wouldn't topple over on us. (see purple rope and belt above) The next problem was how to drive the hinges diagonally through the poles for 12". Markus figured out how to make a guide by measuring the two sides of the triangle on the post and then creating an identical triangle which was used as a guide for the drill (which had a huge extension bit). Lastly, we had to lower the hinges onto the bolt. Here you can see the door in approximately the right position. That was a three-person job; one person held the door on a pry bar and moved it up and down gently, someone else steadied it vertically and the third person tried to drop the hinges on to the bolts.

Here is the finished first door on its hinges. You can see all the bracing. The door opens and closes smoothly and without a lot of physical effort.

One door hung, with the second awaiting hanging. After the doors were hung, Bob installed the latch, Markus installed a ring so the latch can be lifted from the inside, Bob installed an extra piece of wood on the inside center of the left door to close over the right door and installed a piece of wood on the top of the Carriage House door frame. The Carriage House is now the most completed building on the property, though we also spent time preparing for the pouring of a concrete slab for the Garn wood furnace.

That required the installation of forms outside the Carriage House so as to anchor the poles into something (at present there is nothing attaching the Carriage House to the ground). Gale and Sabrina Saxton did the initial installation and then I created forms that fit against the rock surfaces (a series of approximations which required the use of a saber saw) so that the concrete doesn't ooze out the bottom). I also painted the surface of the poles that will be in the concrete with roofing tar and created steel sleeves for the same poles with cut outs for all the attachments to the forms.