It's the Little Things...

Is it weird how little it takes for me to be proud of myself? That has to say something about my psyche, right? Like something good? Because I am so darn proud of myself for doing something that wasn't that difficult. Except the journey took a little longer than expected...

Our house is full of bi fold doors. They look exactly like the one pictured in the center. I know some people really like the shutter look but for some reason they remind me of saloons from the wild west days. To put it simply, I hate them.

Now, not only do we have these doors on our closets (there's two in every bedroom), but we also have two French door versions that lead off of the entry way. The frustrating thing is if you want to close the doors once you get in the room, you have to wedge your fingers in the shutters and pull them closed. It's a little annoying. Actually a lot annoying. And in addition, it's not very pretty to look at a door with a screw head where a knob would normally be. So I figured I'd go to the hardware store and find a screw with no head (yes, that's sadly what I called it) so I could install knobs on both sides of the doors. Easy peasy, right?

Well I got my butt headed to the store and flagged down someone who was working there to ask for these so called "screws with no head." I left that store much more educated, but without a solution. The threaded rods (woot, my vocabulary is increasing) only came in 3" length at the shortest which was about an 1.5" more than I needed them to be. I thought for some reason I'd need some high powered tool to cut through metal. My best bet at this point was to become best friends with a construction worker, (which by the way, I attempted in a bar once but the guy didn't believe I was being genuine when I said I thought his job was really neat...)

With my only solution off of the table, I thought about this problem on and off for months until I magically stumbled upon the solution. Either I suck at searching for things in Google or somehow the magical world of the internet decided to nudge me in the right direction because the solution is so incredibly easy. It took me 15 minutes tops.

All you need is a hack saw, threaded rod (I ended up using a 6"), nuts, and some sort of clamp, which cost me a total of 8 dollars. Not bad for problem that's been irking me for awhile.

First you want to decide how long you want to cut the rod. I made mine about an 1.5" so it would stick out on both sides of the door for the knobs to screw on to. Then you want to screw a nut right up to your measurement (mine was at 1.5".) You're going to use the nut as a guideline for where you cut your rod. At this point you want to clamp it to a work bench or table. I don't have either of those, though I really should get one, so I wrapped a rag around the arm of my outdoor chair and clamped the rod on to it.

Now, as you cut with the hack saw right next to the nut, the nut may start moving down the rod. That's fine, just make sure the nut is on the part of the threaded rod that you're going to be using.

 
Duck didn't quite appreciate my time outside being work related, so work and play it was. Throw Frisbee, saw, throw Frisbee, saw again... It took me a little longer than it needed to... :)

 

Eventually you'll end up sawing all the way through and it'll look like this! A much shorter version of what you started off with. It can be difficult to screw something on the end of the rod where you sawed it off and that's where the nut comes it. When you twist the nut completely off (towards the side you just cut), it helps re thread the rod. 

 



 

Ooooo, ahhhh, knobs on both sides! Dreams becoming reality right here!

 

 

See how simple it is to do? I'm still proud, so I don't care that it was easy! But now I need to find some new knobs. These ones don't do it for me and they're rusting. But I want to make all the closets and doors  in the house the same so I'll probably have to wait until we move downstairs. Better start the search now! I think I'll go with bronze... :)