In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 306 of 1154
No worries anybody. It's life and I can't do much about it or people.
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Pretty safe to say that the porch is watertight for the season. 
I re-built the screen door by removing the damaged bottom and replacing it with a piece of plywood, recovered it with the existing vinyl on the outside and sealed everything nice and tight with aluminum tape. Best damn door I've had back there since I moved in. :)
I found out why it took on water and the MDF got soaked and ruined as well. The screen door was installed after the settling had occurred because the bottom of the door had been cut to fit the same 1/2" discrepancy that exists today. I guess they figured out that they don't make doors for a rough opening that small too and took another idiot shortcut instead of doing things the right way.
Good news?
The settling occurred before I moved in.
Bad news?
The reason that door broke and all that water got in the porch from there was because the dumbasses broke the factory seal on a cheap door to saw into MDF. Because they're dumbasses.
Seriously... WTF is wrong with the previous owners of this house?
Anyhow... got all the siding back up, went nuts with the great stuff and caulk and visqueen and everything should be good for the winter. I'll be monitoring everything of course, but I don't expect there to be any issues until I can get real windows and a real door installed along with finally getting gutters up next spring.
Winter is here... :(
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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MDF, OSB, particle board ... anyone who has anything but PLYWOOD (no matter how cheap it is) as a roof underlayment is in for a heap of hurt.
All the roof has to do is leak - just a little - and the /non-plywood/ roof underlayment loses all structural integrity. Nails come out like they were put into sawdust, and the slightest breeze will rip the entire roof to shreds. This is NOT from personal experience; just seeing failure analyses of houses in hurricane zones.
But from personal experience, I can say that cheap cabinetry made from particle board (the previous owners installed it) will NOT stand up to floor-washing using actual - yanno - water. And that's because the raw edges of the particle board (MDF, OSB) that sit on the floor will suck up water like the sponge it is, swell, and crumble apart from the bottom up.
There was a similar experience at work in the coffee / copy room, where the particleboard / laminate countertop failed when the top-mounted sink seal leaked.
I don't understand how anybody nowadays thinks that those three things are legitimate building materials. And how they're still allowed to be sold.
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Yeah... It's junk.
I mentioned before that I'd like to make arcade cabinets when I get everything squared away and into a more managable house with more free time. They were all built with MDF too. Mine won't be. 
I didn't mean the roof was MDF though. That's all plywood.
The bottom section of the screen door under the windows was (as well as the borders around the screen/glass panels). All but the most expensive screen doors these days are built that way, unfortunatley.
Still though, it probably would have held up just fine over the years with the factory seal.
These geniuses ruined the integrity of the factory seal by taking the bottom casing off, ripping the bottom part of the screen door to fit the smaller opening, then put the bottom casing back on.
All it would have taken is one snowstorm that they weren't immediately out there shoveling the snow away and when it melted it got in and started ruining the bottom of the door.
Idiots... :0
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Yeah they were idiots - but still. Anything made of any of those materials is made to fail.
For instance - the door. Even if it hadn't been damaged by the previous owns, sheer life would have caused it to fail. So you're going in the door but your arms are just LOADED with stuff. You go up to it sideways to get a hand on the knob, and you just crack it open, then you kick it all the way open your foot so you can get through. And unbeknown to you, you flexed a tiny separation between the door's face casing and the bottom edge casing ... and before you know it, the whole door is ruined. Or like the top-mounted sink at work - sooner or later, after ordinary wiping and cleaning, some of the caulking finally rubbed off, water got into the raw cut edge put into the countertop for the sink, and literally the next day that area was swollen up to easily 5x it's normal thickness.
Failure with moisture for that kind of material is a given. And imo moisture is a fact of life for any building, inside or out. imo materials need to be able to resist at least occasional exposure, instead of instantly failing.
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Oh... I agree.
That's why I was getting pretty pissed off when I saw that screen doors over $300 still had an MDF core. I don't get it.
Makes sense when you're buying a bottom of the barrel $80 door, but I think anything above $250 should have at least plywood. Once you start getting to $300 and $400 and beyond it should be solid wood, IMO.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Hmmm... but I get the feeling that things bother you. You shouldn't have to live your life in quiet resentment. Not only is it bad for you, it poisons your relationships. So somewhere between staying quiet and being an aggressive a-hole is a happy medium where you stick up for yourself without being a jerk. It's a hard line to find and most people spend their whole lives not finding that balance, but it's definitely something positive to work towards.
Originally posted by Brenda:
No worries anybody. It's life and I can't do much about it or people.
Just a thought.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:Yeah, I haven't delved into that kind of door - yet. I may at some point. The security screen door I had put in (so my cat wouldn't rip his way out through the screen, like he did with the window) is metal-framed with heavy-duty stainless steel screening. The inner door is a solid wood door I got MANY years ago for really cheap because the bottom panel had a crack in it. And as they say - putty and paint are what a carpenter ain't. But maybe when I get around to doing some more of that kind of work, I'll run into the same kind of frustration with the same kind of built-to-be-shoddy - and yet expensive! - products.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh... I agree.
That's why I was getting pretty pissed off when I saw that screen doors over $300 still had an MDF core. I don't get it.
Makes sense when you're buying a bottom of the barrel $80 door, but I think anything above $250 should have at least plywood. Once you start getting to $300 and $400 and beyond it should be solid wood, IMO.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Yeah, I haven't delved into that kind of door - yet. I may at some point. The security screen door I had put in (so my cat wouldn't rip his way out through the screen, like he did with the window) is metal-framed with heavy-duty stainless steel screening. The inner door is a solid wood door I got MANY years ago for really cheap because the bottom panel had a crack in it. And as they say - putty and paint are what a carpenter ain't. But maybe when I get around to doing some more of that kind of work, I'll run into the same kind of frustration with the same kind of built-to-be-shoddy - and yet expensive! - products.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh... I agree.
That's why I was getting pretty pissed off when I saw that screen doors over $300 still had an MDF core. I don't get it.
Makes sense when you're buying a bottom of the barrel $80 door, but I think anything above $250 should have at least plywood. Once you start getting to $300 and $400 and beyond it should be solid wood, IMO.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
We used to have a big hardware store nearby that sold solid fir multi-light doors that Home Depot drove out of business. Tried to get the same kind of door at Home Depot, all they had was the MDF crap. We would have to get custom-made doors to find the equivalent.
Even the plywood is crap. Hubby delegated me to buy 2x4s and plywood for the bed platforms (twinned together support a king-sized mattress, I have to say it turned out FABULOUS, and he built them in three days!) so I got the best 2x4s I could find (prime, dried ... have you ever touched the other construction lumber? It's literally wet!) ... but even in the "prime" stack it was hard to find two pieces that didn't have big knots, or bark still attached, or big cracks or huge twist/cupping/bowing or other serious flaws. I'm thinking that the "good wood" accounted for something like 5% of the stack cause we looked thru about 50 pieces to find two good ones, and we had to do that several times to get six pieces, and sometimes we didn't get any at all it was just so crappy.
Took a look at the 3/4 plywood which was just awful - full of voids - and got the "furniture grade" plywood. It looks better than construction material, but it's not even 3/4" its 19/32, and when we went to cut it the wood was so soft it broke out on cutting and sanding and was just plain furry. It could have been grown for paper-making for all I know, it was the softest wood I've even seen.
Just for kicks I looked at the 2X10s (16'), and saw only one good piece out of maybe ten, the rest had giant cracks in them that were maybe 1/8" wide at the widest and that ran at least 3'.
I dunno SIX, does the west coast have crappier lumber because we're in the middle of a housing/ renovation boom, and demand is outstripping supply? Or is this just a Home Depot problem? Or is this a nationwide phenomenon? Or am I just being picky?
Next time I go to Home Depot I'll count up the number of voids in the 3/4 plywood, and you tell me ... what's going on here?
I think I'm going to learn furniture-building like hubby did. And sewing. That way I won't be hostage to the crap that's out there.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Hmmm... but I get the feeling that things bother you. You shouldn't have to live your life in quiet resentment. Not only is it bad for you, it poisons your relationships. So somewhere between staying quiet and being an aggressive a-hole is a happy medium where you stick up for yourself without being a jerk. It's a hard line to find and most people spend their whole lives not finding that balance, but it's definitely something positive to work towards.
Originally posted by Brenda:
No worries anybody. It's life and I can't do much about it or people.
Just a thought.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
True enough. But I have one thing looming on the horizon for tomorrow. How to get to my hearing aide appointment in another city with a possible bus strike.
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