Hot dang! I just saved a hundred and seventy-five bucks, give or take. And I did it in ten minutes flat.
A couple years ago, Home Depot sold me a shoddy little vinyl screen door. I bought it because neither HD nor Lowe’s carried real wooden screen doors, and I didn’t want an ugly metal door or a security door. The vinyl things came as close as anything to a real door. They were cheap, too.
Problem was, they come with a shoddy little latch that doesn’t hold the door shut, much less lock it. The HD salesman said you couldn’t drill into the vinyl to screw a hook-&-eye latch into it. The screen door installing handyman agreed, adding that assuming you could drill into the plastic without melting it, you’d need to reattach the hook to an extra-long eyebolt and secure it with a nut; otherwise it would pull out. Ohhh well.
A year passes, and I find some actual, real, old-fashioned plain no frou-frou screen doors at a local door retailer. These cost about $125, and I figure the handyman will charge about $50 to install one of them. And they have to be painted. I delay buying, partly out of inertia and partly out of cheapness.
This week’s steady winds have been driving me nuts. The damn door, which won’t stay closed, keeps banging in the breeze, thwackada whack all night and all day.
So I tracked down the hook-&-eye I bought and didn’t use, and then broke out the electric drill.
Lo! The maleness and paleness lied!
A guide hole significantly smaller than the hook screw’s diameter zipped right into the vinyl, and the screw went in firmly and solidly. No way that thing is going to fall out of there! Now the vinyl door will do-no need to buy a new screen door.
The take-away message:
The frugalist doesn’t believe everything she’s told!