Building a door!
Monday May 13 2024
On Sunday morning we broke camp at Denton Farm Park and drove northwest to Raccoon Branch Campground near Troutdale Virginia. It is a small campground in the Jefferson National Forest with only about 20 sites and only 10 with water/electric and the rest primitive. It is a pretty place and is also the trail head for the path up a mountain to a scenic summit overlook called Dickey-knob, elevation 3650 feet.
 |
| view from Dickey-Knob |
The first night here at Raccoon Branch the temperature dropped to 43 degree F. That was climate shock for us, coming from the south; Had the electric heat set to low and woke up to 61 degrees F inside. The gas furnace quickly brought it up to a comfortable 75.
We have learned from previous visits here that the water pressure and volume is very low. So low you have a hard time washing shampoo out of your hair. I stood outside at the tank fill with a hose for what seemed like an hour to add 20 gallons of water to our onboard tank. It was probably only ten minutes. lol. Now rather than using the campground system, we are using our onboard water pumping system for water pressure. It much better this way.
We visited Millie’s sister Betty on Sunday afternoon, once again I’m amazed that two woman who regularly spend hours on the phone can still fill an afternoon with conversation. I wanted to look over a small project that I was going to do for Betty.
 |
| Arrow points to potting shed where we built a new door. |
Behind her house there is a fair sized wooden shed and some time ago they had an extension built on the back of for use as a potting shed. The door to the potting shed had rotted and there was just some plywood covering the entrance. Tomorrow we would return and I would perform a feat of magic creating a door out of the materials at hand, there was just no way the plywood covering could be made serviceable as a door.
I had tried to plan for this job before we left and brought some additional power tools to compliment the tools I aways carry on the truck. I also had some 2x4”s left over from a home project and packed them, good thing I did. To keep from making a long story I will summarize; existing door frame was repaired and securely mounted in the wall. A new door was fabricated using the 2x4”s and a sheet of OSB (plywood like product).
The challenge was the door frame on the hinge side was falling apart, the door opening was not square, and the floor was not level. I was able to get the hinge side fairly plumb and securely fasted to the wall, I fudged the door dimensions to fit the opening, if measured in detail it would be sort of a parallelogram. I must admit the end result looks pretty darned good and more importantly it works really well too!
Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the project.
Tomorrow we leave here and move southwest to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Just the facts.
Fuel: Mount Airy, NC Circle K, $3.35 per gallon, 11.3 gallons $38.03
Two nights in Raccoon Branch campground using America the Beautiful passport= $42.00
Comments
Post a Comment