Shabin Door

Our most recent, and somewhat daunting, project for the shabin was to install a sliding glass door behind the shed doors. The way I remembered it, such doors came disassembled in boxes roughly the height and width of one panel, but not anymore. The door came fully assembled, and cannot be laid horizontal. So the first challenge was to transport the door up to the land, which is well out of range of the nearest Lowe's delivery area.



To use our truck to transport the door, I made a couple of cradles out of three 2x4's. You can see them running about half way up the side of the door on each end. The door is packaged with a lumber frame, so I nailed the cradles to the door. I ran a couple of straps over the top of the door to add some more stability, and we were off at a cautious pace for the remaining 40 miles to the camp.



Miraculously, the door made it unscathed all the was to the camp. Even more amazingly, Lizz and I managed to get it off the truck and into the shabin without dropping it!.  The door is inside because my plan was to install the door backwards. Typically, the door is placed into its opening from outside the house and nailed to the outside of the jack studs. Because we want it to hang inside the opening for the shed doors, we need to nail it from the inside.



Since the door opening is already fully filled by the shed doors, and the glass door has a 1.5" overhang on its outside face, the first job was to install a secondary frame behind the original door frame. This also allowed me to size and plumb the opening just right for the new door.



After that, all we had to do was slide the door in place and screw it to the new frame.



Now we have a fully sealed structure, ready for luxury camping. This ended up as a single day project, inclusive of the time to drive up and back and buy all the materials; not too shabby.