Back to Work

Over a year ago, someone from a Christian congregation in Monroe, Michigan called my dad and asked for a bid to build doors to match some he had built 20 years ago for the same facility. The process met several delays after the initial agreement, and my dad finally got the go-ahead to begin building the doors a few weeks before his accident.

Not long afterward, Dad reached out to make sure my brother, Micah, had reached someone regarding that job to let them know it wouldn't be able to happen right away. Toward the end of this summer, Dad arranged for his best friend, Scott, who has been helping him take care of as many customers as he could to work with him on this larger project as well. They began acquiring the materials he would need, which included a trip to Detroit to buy wood at a better price than he could get locally.

Scott's story is that when Dad asked him to help, Scott was sure he did not have the necessary skills to complete the job up to Dad's standard of craftsmanship. These days Scott is in awe of what he himself has been able to do, this being so far outside his usual scope of expertise. Now, when someone else had to step in to help with a piece of the project, Scott has such an investment in these doors that he says things like, "Make sure they don't mess up my baby!"

But I want to describe to you what building these doors has entailed. It didn't seem like a big deal to me that Scott and my dad have been building these doors, but then week after week my siblings and I keep receiving pictures of Dad hard at work with Scott, and eventually I started to think, "Man, are they still working on those doors?" I had no idea how involved this project is! So if you'd like to gain an appreciation for just how much work my dad has been doing over the past six weeks or so, and what going back to work has looked like for him in his present condition, read on!

To start, Dad told Scott he'd need a place to sit at his shop in order to direct Scott in building the doors. And not just any place, but it had to be his La-Z-Boy (aka mom's La-Z-Boy which he took over the use of) because he needed a chair that could take the pressure off his spine. His plan was to take the chair to his shop and somehow raise it higher so that he had a good view. Scott picked up Dad's chair in his truck, Mom drove Dad in their car since that's what he's able to get into, and they drove to Harbor Freight to purchase a hydraulic table lift which they then screwed the recliner onto the top of (Mom says, "Of course, doesn't everybody do that with their recliner?"). The lift is even on wheels, so Scott pushes Dad all over the shop!

Dad started instructing Scott how to cut up the oak planks that they had purchased in order to make doors that are 2 3/8" thick (apparently that's a significantly thick door). They're also eight feet tall. Dad says, "They probably weigh in the neighborhood of 160lbs a piece." They weighed the oak planks for the frame of one door, which were 137lbs, to which Mom replied "So the doors weigh more than Dad did at his lowest weight of this whole thing."

This is one of the original, 20-year-old doors 

Scott cut all the planks to the right length and width because they were too large for Dad to handle. Then they glued and clamped together pairs of boards to make the different sections of the doors, and Scott trimmed each pair of boards on the table saw, and he ran each piece through an edge sander before they were ready to be assembled. Dad worked on all of the gluing along with Scott, but Scott had to do all of the heavy lifting, sanding, and sawing before it came time to put the doors together.

Dad, Scott, and another guy named Will spent ten hours one Saturday in Monroe, fitting and trimming the doors on site to match the uneven door frame. As they fitted the doors, Dad helped to shape them bit by bit, and eventually his recliner (which they took along, of course!) became covered with a 2" layer of planer chips and sander dust. It's one of the downsides of using power tools in your favorite recliner. They then brought the doors back to Dad's shop to continue refining and finishing them.

After the doors were fitted, Dad's recliner met all sorts of sawdust as he got his hands into the project more and more. He belt-sanded the four door faces as Scott was sure he would "muck them up'' if it was his responsibility. They created a form that they used to give the door rail a fancy-looking edge (I called it a sculpted edge, but was corrected, as that's a different art form). They also made molding that frames the windows of the door, and once they received the glass Dad completed all of the fitting and installation of the glass and the molding that holds it in place. Dad was able to become more and more involved throughout the process due to his continued efforts at physical therapy which have helped him to become stronger and have more endurance.

While waiting for the hardware to arrive, the doors have been sanded, stained and sprayed with polyurethane repeatedly and in a systematic order which requires letting them sit undisturbed for three days at a time between coats and between sides. Who knew that making doors was such an arduous process!