Adventure, Cuisinier, Concoctions: French Doors

Wow.. ?? I am not exactly sure this is the appropriate word for what I am going to tell you, so you can draw your own conclusions.
About 3 week ago I called Quality Door in Lakeport (we don’t have lots of choices here at Clearlake), talked with Andy. Told him the problems with the French Doors and he told me when he was in our area he would call. About 2 weeks later I called again and talked with the receptionist whom took a message cause Andy was busy (probably at lunch). I went about my business and about 4pm I noticed I had a message, so called back, but Andy was not available (one busy guy). Receptionist said she would have him call.. In the meantime I ran to wally world and was home in a matter for a couple of hours. I checked for messages from Andy and there were none. So I called Quality Door again and this time I got “Andy”.. He proceeded to tell me, “that he was coming from Hidden Valley tried to call me and no answer so he went back to the shop! Really? I said. He then said he “might” be in my area Thursday or Friday?? And I said Ok thank you and hung up. Today is Saturday, and guess what?? Yep you guessed it, no call no Andy from Quality door in Lakeport!
It must be nice to be so independently wealthy that you don’t have to CARE about the CUSTOMER!!!! I sure hope Andy owns the shop, cause if I owned the shop? HE WOULD BE FIRED!!
Continued:
So without any further ad-do, I tried different people around the county and NO ONE DOES WEATHER STRIPPING FOR FRENCH DOORS! AND I MEAN NO ONE!
Ok so here’s the deal. Ev and I decided to do this job ourselves!! or maybe not , you can draw your own conclusions..
We started on Wednesday 11/13 (maybe the date was the problem?), we took the doors down, assessed what materials we probably would need and off to Mendo mill we went. We bought a “shoe”, we bought the roll of weather stripping with sticky stuff, caulking, silicone, masking tape, more weather stripping that fits into “grooves”. About $60 plus or so.. Got the doors off, did some work on them, like putty, sand, caulk, primer and paint. Took the “oak” threshold off and sanded it and varathaned it. Put a bead of silicone on the ledge where it goes and screwed it back down.. Looks fabulous!!
There was some dry rot in one of the doors down low, so I dug out what I could of the dry rot wood and filled with caulking, since the wood putty we bought was like dried out!
We started working on fitting the “shoes” to the bottom of the doors. They can be a bit tricky.. We did learn about the “T-Astrical” you see the “T” that is a T-Astrical” and it is a total pain my, well you know what I mean. you see it doesn’t go all the way down to the threshold of the door, only to the bottom of the door. The “T” does however house a piece of weather striping so when both doors are closed no “weather” can get in.. oh yeah right.. besides that and moving right along..
Now we are trying to fit the “shoe” to the bottom of the doors and guess what happens? The “T-Astrical” sticks out on the outsides of one door about inch and half or so. Problem SHOE DOESN’T FIT AROUND “T-ASTRICAL”! uummm..?? here comes the creative part.. so we are looking very closely at this shoe (aluminum with rubber) and it seems we can modify the shoe by using a hack saw to make the appropriate cuts to help it fit.. awww.. “by George I do believe we have it”!! After cutting and measuring and re-cutting and more measuring we put the shoes on both doors and man they looks GREAT!!!!!!!!!! Key word here “looks”.. We put the door back on, slide the shoes on and?? shoes are fitting nicely.. however, there is “daylight”!! “Daylight” is not good, cause if we can see daylight, that means the rain can get through too!
We did slide the shoes down onto the threshold so they were as tight as we could get it.. still we saw “daylight” not in all places, but?? you get the idea.. So here we are 3 days later and really no better off than we were when we started! The French doors are wooded and about 22 years old. They too have extended gaps, wooded doors expand and contract.. They take all the weather in both summer and winter.. I guess they are just tired.. Hell they ain’t the only ones! One thing is THEY REALLY LOOKS GREAT!!!!!! So we will have to go back to the duct tape and visqueen before the rains..
Did I mention I am trying to get my Christmas Decorating done, so that has been on hold for the past few days so we could “fix” the doors.. oh well..
So the moral of this story is: T-Astrical’s suck and old wooded doors don’t like to be sealed cause they have way tooo many gaps!