Harrumph!

In silly self-absorption, I confess I’m still a bit player. However, in line with my index-finger heart of three years ago, I have been admiring the cityscape about to work its way off my body.

There’s an elegant symmetry to getting around to decorating the matching finger — left hand this time. It’s spontaneous art. While temporary like a vending machine tattoo, this one is there for months, not hours or days.

I’m probably not different from others in not really noticing or appreciating the body changes that should be remarkable for their beauty or other artistic value.  In fairness to humans, most mildly remarkable physical changes occur over long periods. It’s similar to waking up on a vacation or business trip to find that our toenails seem to have grown a quarter inch or more overnight or the hair on our temples have grayed during the day.

This particular body exhibit was not some incremental surprise. Instead, I whacked the nail with a hammer and knew it would become illustrated. The unexpected aspect was that from the combination of pain and quick discoloration I expected the whole nail to blacken and slough off by now.

This injury does have an urban  silhouette, a skyline with a couple of tall buildings. It reminded me of the upstairs bath in our JP house. I designed and helped tile walls and tub enclosure with gray for the background sky, black for the skyscrapers and white tiles for the lit windows all around the room. It hadn’t entered my mind that the same effect was available with the face of a hammer head.

I suppose there must be a medical term for such a clumsy injury, like subungual contusion. Really though, it symbolizes both my impatience and my ynesting instinct.

In a sort of scent-marking ritual, I have been doing this and that in the new-to-us-as-of-August house.  The previous owners of over 20 years apparently didn’t do squat to the house, but the paid to have a lot done — new windows, bike storage, fully wired and lit garage and on and on. I admit that when I find little things to fix or customize, I am thrilled and driven.

So it was between Christmas and New Years. We were soon headed off to London to visit ye olde brother-in-law’s family and I had a group of doors to batch process. Previously, I found that the door to the basement did not close easily and scraped the finish off the kitchen floor; that just took removing it, planing the bottom in the right places and remounting it. For the recent project, it was two doors that would not stay latched and one that would not latch at all.

The house was built in 1900 and inside still has the mortise locks of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These iron and brass treasures are available from collectors and rehab hardware shops, rebuilt from old houses. The manufacturer (Sargent) is still stamping ‘em out but in much larger, more secure versions. The ones here are simple enough to open and play with, so long as they don’t have broken springs or worn parts. Like most people, we don’t use the skeleton keys, so the locks don’t get much wearing motion beyond the handles turning the bolt.

Two of these were easy and a bit of a surprise.The bolt was on backwards to the faceplate. That is, the vertical side of the bolt that should catch in the slot in the jam didn’t. Instead, the curved side went into the slot and the door would open with the slightest touch, wind or passing foot weight.

The locks are not totally symmetrical in that the bolt is not in the middle of the box. That means you can’t just remove the lock and turn it upside down to reverse the direction of the bolt into the strike plate.  However, removing and opening the lock let you disconnect the main spring, reverse the bolt and reassemble the mechanism. When the lock went back in and its screws were tightened, its bolt went into the right slot in the right way.

Those were easy enough. However, looking at the antique hardware — all seemingly original — I had to assume that these two bedroom doors had never closed unless someone used the skeleton keys for the deadbolt. Trusting? Lazy? Unobservant?  Occam’s razor suggests simply that no one was ever inspired over 109 years to remove and reverse these two locks’ works.

The third lock proved my nemesis though. The door to what we call the gnome closet is deep but very low under an eave. We knew that the previous owner’s only child loved the long room and considered it her play house; apparently there was no need to close it.

It did not shut because the lock itself protruded from the door and caught on the strike plate.  While the house seems well built in nearly all aspects, the same carpenter or locksmith must have worked on this door as well. The mortise for the lock was simply not deep enough.

Well, give a man a tool and he is cocky. I have a set of chisels, which I hardly ever use. Ta da.

I successfully removed the lock and worked in the hole, being careful not to damage the door or dig too deeply and cause the old mechanism to wiggle and loosen. Of course, I was pleased with myself as I worked. I had left my mark on the house, although I did not anticipate leaving one on me.

To get the lock precisely into the enlarged mortise well, I used a hammer, likely a man’s favorite tool after a chainsaw. The lock itself is very narrow and I was impatient enough to finish that I missed on my last, hardest swing.

Hence, I decorated my finger.

The pain was substantial, with the additional emotional load of my knowing I’d be sitting in a plane for 7 hours shortly and then explaining the nasty nail. Fortunately, my brother-in-law had likewise maimed himself a few times and was kind. Moreover,  his father, my late father-in-law, was famous in the family for nearly removing a thumb woodworking on a Shopsmith.

I have certainly hurt myself far worse and under more embarrassing circumstances (like those involving anger or alcohol). The bonus on this one was the free art. I thought of my finger when I saw the newspaper/sidewalk/snow art recently. I would hope that any future minor events like this come with attractive illustration.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, locks, art, home repair