DOORS
THE CHALLENGE
Doors pose a few different types of challenges. First, there is securing space you don't want your child to access. For a long time, we locked him out of our TV room since he kept smashing our TV. Now we've created a boundary between his apartment suite and the remainder of our house. A second challenge is related to damage done to doors and door frames. Our son likes to slam doors when he's frustrated and we've tried a number of different ways - with varying levels of success - to help keep him from damaging the door. We've definitely been in the situation where we can't close our front door and there was nothing we could do about it - it's kind of unnerving, to be honest.
SECURING YOUR SPACE - LOCKS
There are a lot of options for securing your space and much of it has to do with your particular circumstance. We've used this approach with the primary boundary between his apartment suite and the rest of our home. If I were to start over, I'd have used a solid wood door instead of the hollow core that came pre-hung (we had to replace the door frame because of damage he'd done previously). But so far this has worked fairly well.
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First, we added a deadbolt lock low on the door where he typically kicks the door. Deadbolts are fairly easy to install - a deadbolt jig helps, but isn't necessary if you have a 2-1/8" hole-saw bit for the lock body and a 1" spade bit for the bolt assembly. Follow the directions on the deadbolt, but it is generally just 1) drill the hole for the lock body in the door. 2) Drill the hole for the bolt assembly in the door. 3) Mark the outline of the outside of the bolt assembly, then 4) use a chisel to make space for it flush to the edge of the door.
5) Mark the place on the frame for the bolt (I suggest putting lipstick on the end of the bolt, closing the door, and then sliding the bolt onto the frame - this will tell you exactly where the hole in the frame needs to go). Then 6) drill holes for the bolt to go into the door frame. Finally, 7) install the strike pad by marking and chiseling out a place for it in the frame.
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For additional security, we added reinforced doorstops below the edge of the door. This only works because of the wood which connects to a wall nearby and it isn't the prettiest solution in the world, but it's helped with our peace of mind if nothing else.
SECURING YOUR SPACE - GATES
We've been successful in keeping our son's apartment suite and our living space separate; however, he still had access outside, which means he could still get to our deck and back doors (which are glass). We've added plexiglass to the outside of those doors (see the windows section), but we really didn't want him on our deck either. So we decided to build a gate to keep him from having access to the deck.
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I built the gate using 1/2" EMT conduit to drive to reduce the weight and keep it secure. I simply cut conduit in the shape of a rectangle to fit across the opening and bolted bars ever 10" using nylon lock-nuts. I then bolted on the hinges and lock catch. I included a diagonal bar for added structural integrity BUT when I put the hinges on I realized I put the diagonal going the wrong direction (the diagonal bar should be highest on the hinge side). I'll get around to fixing that eventually...
DOOR FRAMES AND HINGES
I've had less success repairing door frames and hinges that our son has broken. Generally the damage is splitting of the wood down the frame along the hinges and often near the catch plate. To fix the splitting, liquid nails works well; use clamps to force the sides back together and a wood screw above and below. ​
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Another option is replacing the area that has been cracked. This requires some precision, but I've made it work on our front door (after our son cracked the frame within days of us replacing it). First, you have to remove the damaged portion of frame. I used a Dremel oscillating saw to cut out the damaged portion of the frame. I then cut a replacement piece of wood to fit - in this case, I avoided pine and used the hardest type of wood I had (I think it's oak). Finally, I cut new holes for the door latch and deadbolt, chiseled out spots for the strike plates, and then installed the replacement board into the opening in the frame. Notice that I countersunk the screws so they don't rub against the door. To be honest, this was very tricky, but after a few adjustments, it has worked out very well.
DOOR FRAMES - PART 2
For two doors that are continual trouble spots, I'm trying a few different solutions - I'll keep you posted with how well they work. The first is using self-closing hinges to reduce the force with which he can slam the door. These are fairly easy to install (just replace the existing hinge - one at a time - with a self closing hinge and use the tools provide (usually a pin and a hex wrench) to tighten the spring mechanism.
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In another challenging entryway, I've built a reinforced door out of 1/2" plywood and used dual action hinges to make it into a swinging door (like a restaurant or saloon door). It's tricky to get the seal tight, so using it on an outdoor space (like I am) is proving difficult, but it's reduced the door slams which have reduced the stress in our lives - so not everything is a 100% victory! You can tell by the picture that this was a double door that I turned into a single door opening. I still need to add paneling to weatherproof it all...
