Patio screen doors – the kind with wheels on the top and the bottom – are the creation of the devil.
I swear, this is true.
Of all the household tasks to be done, installing one of these satanic doors is my least favorite.
I’ve had a barely workable screen door for a couple of years now, and finally decided to get a new one.
So, this morning, I went to the local lumberyard, hauling the old door with me to be sure I got the right size.
I brought the new door back to the house and, of course, couldn’t get it in correctly.
Maybe because it’s been a stressful week, I totally lost it, ended up pulling the damnable thing out, ripping the screen, and stomping on it until it was a crumpled, hideous mess, and breaking my favorite screwdriver in the process.
Well, sometimes even a strong woman needs a cathartic minute or five.
Figuring that I could pull at least a three-fer (it turned out to be a four-fer), I decided to drive to Hyannis and the Home Depot – the cost of the gas would be worth it if I could parlay the trip into several errands.
So, I got Home Depot on the phone, and after they connected me to the Door Person, I asked him if they had a patio screen replacement door that didn’t require a PhD to install.
The salesman, whose name I don’t recall, said “No, you don’t need a doctorate, only a Masters in Mechanical Engineeering.”
I knew right away, I was on the right track (pun intended).
I stopped in to BJ’s, Home Depot, the bank and on impulse, Four Seas ice cream shop in Centerville; they are closing tomorrow, and I wanted to stock up on a couple of quarts, including Butter Crunch, not one of my usuals.
A friend noticed the big parcel in the back of the truck, and came over to see what it was. She’s a handy kind of a gal, and she almost got the door on when we ran into a snag.
So, she asked another friend to help, a guy who seems able to fix almost anything.
He managed to install not only the door, but a primitive locking mechanism that he predicted would fall off, but who cares.
The whole process was ridiculously complicated, requiring lining up tiny wheels on two tiny tracks, adjusting and re-adjusting four stupid, screw-enabled mechanisms. I still don’t know how he did it without magic or invocation.
So, now I have a splendid new door with an intact screen that opens easily and that doesn’t squeal. It even locks after a fashion.
Turns out that Butter Crunch is one of my fixit-pal’s favorites, and I sent him home with a quart of the best ice cream on Cape Cod.
And that’s how I spent this afternoon.