A Tiny House is honestly not that difficult to build. Just takes time, a bit of money, lots of research, patience, and the ability to motivate yourself to keep going. The door was my downfall. Over a period of about a month I let this door beat me down. You see when it comes to a tiny house, it isn’t that difficult to square. A window, super easy to square. However, when it comes to a door I was unprepared for what awaited me.
I watched my twenty to twenty thousand videos online with info on shimming/squaring a door and then went to work. First I flashed it appropriately. Then I put the door in and had my wife hold it while I shimmmed and screwed in the correct areas (different for each door). Then I stepped back, closed the door, and what was this? A sliver of light coming out of one corner of the seal around the weather stripping. That won’t do.
I then set about shimming, re-shimming, shimming the top, the bottom, tearing out the shimms, starting again, and then the thought started that the door might be warped. I figured since I’d let this door sit in my garage for a bit, maybe it was warped from….i dunno, just let me have this. After using a string wrapped around to verify the door wasn’t warped, and after hours of work on the door realizing I couldn’t handle it on my own I just stopped.
I went back in and just plain gave up. I couldn’t figure it out. I figured I’d just hire a handy man to come get it right. Problem was that the massive floods down here damaged a lot of homes and caused handy men to be in high demand. That and the fact that I was just so beaten feeling. I don’t know why but I was truely beaten. I gave up. I let the house sit for a month without really doing anything. When I finally got someone to come out it only took them 10 minutes. Cost me 50 bucks. When I came out to check it out there was the tiniest sliver of light coming through the weather stripping. Guy said, “Meh, it happens occasionally, you just buy a bit of extra weather stripping or learn to get over it.”
I came inside to my existing house and low and behold, all my doors have a bit of an extra bit here or there where they aren’t perfect. Truth is, I should have realized I’m building this myself and my family. I shouldn’t hold myself to some unrealistic expectation that I should be a master carpenter right out of the gate. Since this incident I haven’t felt beat down. I got over myself and am working as fast as my budget and time allow.
