I’m freakishly proud of the end result of this project – “look World – we’re handy!” Our back slider had gotten to the point that it took the Circus Strong Man (or Woman) to wrestle it open. The little wheels in the bottom had given up their fight for life LONG ago. It was on several around-the-house fix-it lists for many months, but we just never got around to either calling someone to fix it or doing anything about it ourselves.
Okay, that’s not entirely true….we did ask a neighbor who had recently had hers repaired for the name of her handyman. She gave it to us and we promptly sat on the information for weeks. Then briefly in conversation, I remembered my disgusting lack of action and mentioned to her that I still hadn’t called the gentleman. This funny look crossed her face and she told me not to bother ‘cause he DIED! How random is that?? Plus, I’m ashamed to admit that my second thought was “well now where am I going to find someone good?” My theory is that my soul isn’t completely black since my first thought was “how sad for his family!”
So it’s late Sunday afternoon and I look up to discover that my husband has taken the back slider door out of its track. I had seen him measuring and whatnot, but had no idea he was actually going to attempt the repair at that very moment. He realized how damn heavy the stupid glass is AFTER lifting it out of the track. Adding to the battle was our hideous window toppers (one of those window box contraptions handcrafted by the previous owners) which hang down just enough to necessitate the door being practically horizontal if you want to leave them intact. Seeing the look of red-faced concentration on his face and having visions of herniated discs – I ran over to help. Which launched us into the big fix…
Alan disassembled the door bits and assigned me the lovely task of scrubbing the grease (and pounds of dog hair) from the track. One disgusting toothbrush, a roll of paper towels, lots of elbow grease, and enough WD-40 to de-squeak the whole house – the track was sparkly and beautiful. Well, as sparkly as sliding glass patio door tracks can be.
The door was eventually reassembled (Alan had to pull off the frame to replace the dead wheels and re-silicone the seal) and set back in its track victoriously. Now it slides like it’s greased with BUTTER! The awesomeness is remarkable.
And as we did the post-project wrap-up (i.e. how much did this cost us?) we discovered that the whole thing cost about $35 including a new can of WD-40 (since I burned through the whole other can). Savings = phenomenal, since I was figuring it would cost us several hundred dollars for someone else to do the job. Since we’re both inherently frugal (cheap?) people, this made the whole thing even better and served to make me feel like the grimy disgusting track cleaning was worth it. Maybe.
