Friday 22 October 2010

(3) Installing the new doorknobs


The new spindle was a little over 11cm long, more than enough to fit the door.

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Here’s one of the doorknobs, with its roseplate, mounted on the spindle – you can just see the grub screw through its access hole, securing the doorknob to the spindle. It fits in the notch of a groove running the length of the spindle. 


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With this side secured to the spindle, I popped it on the door, and screwed the other doorknob and roseplate onto the other side until it was snug against the door. The photo below shows the unsecured side. I took this shot from below – you can see the grub screw and roseplate screws not yet in place. I wanted to mount the doorknobs with the grub screw access from the bottom, so you don’t see it during normal use.


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With the doorknobs in place, all that was left was to drill holes into the door for the roseplates to screw into. So everything would line up right, I got a dry eraser marker and drew an outline of the roseplate...


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... and marked the correct position of the screwholes.


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That yellow thing is a little hand drill from an inkjet printer refill kit. The screws for this roseplate were to enter the door at an angle, and I didn’t want to use a powerdrill in case I messed it up for want of fine control.

As it happens, what I thought was a dry eraser marker turned out to be a permanent CD/DVD marker pen. It took several coats of paint before you couldn’t see the blue outline anymore. D’oh! The photo below shows the screws in place – notice they sit flush with the slope of the roseplate, not the door:


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These brass screws came with the doorknobs, and have been given an aged look that can be polished off. To my eye they look fine as it is so I left them the way they came.


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