Stairway Doors for Dummies

Door at top of stairs

Face facts: you can find some of the most cockamamie notions about how to carry out simple DIY projects just by browsing through the posts at eHow.com and the niche sites where Leaf Group is stashing their back catalog. If you're not aware of it, the site's business  model was this: self-appointed freelance writers would google a question scraped from Search engine queries and then write it as if they were experts. No kidding! And that's how utter garbage like today's DotD nominee not only made it onto the 'net but has managed to stay there for half a decade. Without further ado, here's our critique of Nicole Brown and her eHow.com post, "How to Install a Door at the Top of the Stairs."

Brown, here making her first appearance at the Antisocial Network, started with the obligatory eHow introduction suggesting reasons why someone might want to install such a door:

"...a door at the top of a staircase can help prevent injuries, particularly if you have young children in your home. A staircase door can also help control the temperature of your upstairs living space by reducing heat flow from the staircase."

First off, Nicole, that's not what "heat flow" means. And if you're that concerned about heat, shouldn't you have a door at the bottom of the stairs? Of course, Brown totally ignored the questions of which way this door should swing, and launched immediately into installing what she called "pre-made doors" — by which we assume she meant a pre-hung door...

It's when Brown got to the actual "installation" steps, however, that her ignorance of all things door became glaringly obvious. Having seen instructions for a pre-hung door somewhere, Nicole pretended to have plucked a series of steps from a printed book, long a method for disguising one's ignorance at eHow. That's how she came up with the following:

• "Measure the door frame at the top of the staircase with a measuring tape."
• "Lay [a section of 1-by-2-inch lumber] on the floor in the door frame and place the door on top of [it]."
• "Mark the position of the latch on the door frame. Mark the positions of the hinges on the opposite side of the door frame."
• "Cut a 1-inch hole for the latch in the side of the door frame with a router. "
• "Position the hinges on the opposite edge of the door. Attach the hinges to the door... Attach the hinges to the door frame..."
• "Insert the knob and latch assembly through the pre-cut hole on the latch side of the door."

Yup, according to this utterly clueless freelancer — despite having published "two 'how-to' books through Atlantic Publishing Group" — that's all you need to do. Never mind not having a stop molding or casing molding, never mind not mortising the hinges into either door or frame, never mind not having prepped a rough opening, never mind even considering which way the door should swing.

Nope, that's all our Dumbass of the Day says you need to do. Our staff handypersons, however, are all upchucking in their wastebaskets after reading this dreck!

[NOTE: in most jurisdictions, any door at the top of the stairs, regardless of its swing direction, must open onto a landing. Brown didn't mention that, either!]

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