Door Swing for Dummy DIYers

Difference between left-hand and right-hand swing door

A lot of our DotD candidate finds come from the everyday research our staffers perform even when they're not "working" (we use that term loosely). A recent example is the staffer who wanted to replace the door to her powder room with something less blah that the ugly fiberglass-coated thing she had. During the process of ordering a new slab, she was asked "Right- or left-handed?" That's when she came across eHow.com "professional" Jim Franklin and his post, "How to Identify Right & Left Hinged Doors" on Hunker.com. She's still scratching her head a week later...

This one's typical of eHow.com: desperate to meet Demand Media's minimum word count, Franklin vomited out 300 words of text to say, more or less, what a site like the Natural Handyman can cover in less than 50. In fact, Franklin even reproduces that website's instructions in his "tips" section! But that's not until after Jim has explained what hinges are...

"Hinges are mechanisms that allow doors to open and close. The hinges support the door and provide a swinging action. They come in different styles and finishes to accent home decor..."

...and botched a discussion of why anyone wants to know the difference between left- and right-hinged doors:

"Identifying whether a door is right or left-hinged is important for installation. There are a few ways you can tell the direction of a door hinge..." ...which confused our staffer: she had the (correct) impression that there's no difference in the hinges between the two doors, just their placement in the door frame. Franklin, however, went on to tell his readers to "(1) Stand on the side of the door that swings away from you. (2) Close the door. (3) Open the door and observe which direction the door swings toward." Which isn't right- vs. left-hand, it's inswing vs. outswing... sort of.  Jim next tells his readers to

"Identify the door hinge. If the door swings to the right when you open it, it is a right-hinged door. If the door swings to the left when you open it, it is a left-hinged door."

...which, frankly, doesn't make much sense. And then there's this crap:

"Left-hinged doors have the hinges on the left of the casing while right-hinged have the hinges on the right."

Which completely ignores the fact that right and left, in this description, are dependent on which side of the door you're standing on. Finally, Franklin reproduces (word for word!) the instructions from the Natural Handyman. He finishes with some crap about locating the strike plate... It's actually pretty easy to describe, at least for interior doors: stand on the outside of the door and if the knob is on the right, it's a right-swing door. You can figure out the rest, even if Jim couldn't.

And that, dear readers, is how a business type "explains" the things that craftspeople can do in their sleep. Small wonder that people like Franklin have to pay a handyman to come to their houses and hang new doors... and that people like Jimmy-boy collect Dumbass of the Day awards like they were baseball cards!

copyright © 2017-2022 scmrak

DDIY - DOORS