The Simple Hinge Replacement Story
2012
Written 7/18/2016 Re-written 8/20/2016
Howard Yasgar
This story is just one of many that we experienced trying to do a renovation project in the Florida Keys.
Most everyone we have ever spoken to has had similar situations, especially when dealing with local
Keys contractors or suppliers.
I have always considered myself somewhat of a craftsman, however this simple hinge replacement project, and our dealing with a Florida Keys supplier, took me to my limits.
In September of 2001, we purchased a property located on 160 Palo de Oro Drive in Venetian Shores.
The house, as well as the property had been neglected for several years.
The home itself was built in 1967, by a well known local Keys contractor named Gene Rhodus.
The actual owner and designer of the home was a Mr. Wittman, a retired engineer from Wisconsin.
Mr. Wittman had sold his wood burning stove business to Sears Roebuck and then he went on to teach engineering at the University of Chicago.
It appears Wittman didn’t like teaching college in Chicago so he went on to teach in Japan where he was well received.
When Wittman, returned to the states, it was 1966 and he purchased a building lot in what was then a new development in Islamorada called Venetian Shores.
Once Mr. Wittman purchased the lot at 160 Palo de Oro, he set about designing his house.
At the time hurricane Donna was still on the minds of people in the Florida Keys, so when designing his home Mr. Wittman built in all kinds of hurricane safeguards, like heavy duty concrete construction, twelve inch pilings and both gas and electric for cooking.
Being an engineer, he incorporated revolutionary features into the homes design.
His design was so revolutionary that pictures of the house appeared in Florida real estate news papers.
The rear second floor porch of Wittman’s house faced “Snake Creek” which is the main waterway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.
Under the porch, Wittman designed a boat slip that was 20 feet wide by 50 feet long, and he designed a walkway that crossed over it.
Under the walkway, on both the left and right sides, he incorporated into his design, concrete storage lockers.
Each storage locker was four foot wide by four foot deep and four foot tall. Wittman used them to store his buoys, rope and other marine related items.
By the time we purchased the property in 2001, both concrete storage lockers had weather beaten and worn out plywood doors, that looked pretty bad.
It was the summer of 2012 when we were at a local Keys high school craft show where they had booths set up displaying work of local manufacturers.
What caught our attention was a vendor making outdoor Adirondack chairs and tables out of a material called TREX, which is a white, man made plastic lumber.
He also made cabinet doors and he was embossing pictures of palm trees or fish on them.
The vendor said that he could make anything we wanted out of TREX, so I asked him if he could make us new doors for our storage lockers, and he said yes.
He came by our house and measured each concrete locker.
The fellow said that he would fabricate two door frames one for each locker, each frame was to have two TREX doors mounted in in it, and he said he would also supply a finished molding, all for $385.00
We told him to go ahead and to emboss green colored palm trees on the doors.
He was to do it, just like we had seen on items he had on display in his booth.
He said that was no problem.
About three weeks later, he showed up with the TREX doors already pre-mounted in the frames.
He said that they were ready for me to install.
However, I saw that the green palm trees were missing.
When I brought it to his attention that the embossed green palm trees were missing, he said, that it would be an additional $150.00 for each set of doors.
To say we were disappointed would be an understatement., but rather than call him a liar, I bit my tongue.
Realizing that we were in the Florida Keys, my wife and I were already used to dealing with vendors, that do not do what they promise or say they will do.
Also, we had already paid him $385.00 for the doors and frames.
So we reluctantly told him we would pay the extra money to have the four palm trees embossed into the doors.
He did emboss the green palm trees, and when he delivered them, I installed the frames and both sets of doors onto the storage lockers.
By 2013, we had started using the storage lockers to put away the extra tile left over from our renovation of the house.
One day when I went to open one of the locker doors it seemed to be very stiff, I found that it was because the all of the hinges were made of steel and completely rusted.
It appeared that the manufacturer had used regular indoor steel cabinet hinges, not stainless steel, salt water resistant hinges that we assumed he had used.
In an attempt to solve the problem, I removed one of the rusty hinges off the locker door.
My wife and I then went to Home Depot to look for stainless steel salt water resistant replacement hinges.
After Home Depot, it was off to Lowe’s, and then all the independent hardware stores in the keys.
It appeared that everyone had similar style hinges but they were not the same, and none of them would work properly.
Not even one of the hardware stores had any style of stainless hinge that we could convert to use.
Then in desperation, we started searching the internet, and that project also soon became a nightmare, it appeared that no one had a similar hinge.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there were tons of hinges available on the internet, but not one of the hinges looked or functioned the same as what we needed.
After many attempts including Amazon and Ebay, we were starting to get depressed, it appeared that the hinge we needed had been discontinued and was no longer being made anywhere.
Several internet companies said that we should send them our rusty sample, but we didn’t want to do that and perhaps lose our sample.
Now one might ask why we didn’t go back to the manufacturer that made the doors.
It was because we were extremely hesitant to call him due to the bad experience we already had with him in the past regarding the embossing of the palm trees.
Eventually, I decided to just go out and buy a completely different style of stainless hinge and find a way to adapt them.
I bought several different styles of stainless hinges hoping that I could get one of them to work.
Incredible as it may seem, I learned that not all hinges work the same, and none of the stainless hinges I bought would work on our locker doors.
Finally, after a year had passed, we simply gave up. We had spent quite a bit of time and money trying every style hinge available that might work.
After much debate, we reluctantly called up the fellow that had originally made the locker doors for us.
He said yes he would get us stainless hinges.
We waited several months, and we called him several times to remind him, but over a year went by with no word from him.
One day in the fall of 2016, we attended an art show at a local church, and the outdoor furniture vendor’s wife was working in their booth.
We told her that we had been waiting for over a year, for her husband to call us with the replacement hinges and she said that she would look into it immediately.
We hoped that she would be a more responsible person than her husband, but there was no such luck, neither she nor her husband ever called us back.
After another three months, passed, my wife decided to make one last try, and she called the door maker up.
He said, “yes” he had the stainless steel hinges waiting for us.
He said they cost him $70.00, and we could pick them up anytime, so we said we would go to his shop and get them that very day.
Once we were at his shop, his story changed completely.
He now said that the original style of hinge was a discontinued item.
However, the one he had was similar to the original, and he said that it would bolt up almost the same as the original, all we had to do was slightly alter the door frames.
As we sat there in his office, he was talking to us as if we were both professional cabinet makers with a complete cabinet manufacturing shop at our disposal.
He held two small pieces of TREX in his hand as well as a new hinge and he explained how easy it all was to do.
He had already prepared four pieces of TREX boards for us, they were 3-1/2 inches wide by four feet long by ½ inch thick.
He said, all we needed to do, was to cut the TREX boards to length, and then install them in the doorframes.
After that, we could easily install the replacement hinges.
He assured me that all the screw holes in the doors would be the same.
Our bill was $115.00 for the eight hinges, the four pieces of TREX board and the screws.
As soon as we got home, I immediately removed one of the locker doors.
He had said this was going to be a simple project so I thought we could get it all done that day.
The first thing I found was that TREX boards he gave us were too long.
Fortunately I had a cut off saw down in our utility room, so I set it up and I cut the pieces of TREX the correct length.
Then when I tried to fit the newly cut TREX Boards into the sided of the existing door frames, I found that they needed to be notched on the top and the bottom in order to fit properly.
Fortunately I just happened to have a carpenter’s casement saw to do the job, but I needed a way to hold the TREX boards.
Fortunately I just happened to have a bench mounted vice in our utility room, to hold the boards while I was notching them.
Then when I removed the other rusty hinges from the locker doors, I found that the new replacement hinges were completely different from the original hinges, all the screw holes were in different locations.
We debated if we should we drive back to his shop, and ask for our money back.
Fortunately I happened to own a battery powered hand drill and a large selection of drill bits, so I re-drilled the doors to accept the hinges.
After re-drilling all the holes, I was able to install two of the new hinges into a door.
Then I found that the one half inch thick piece of TREX board he gave us was much too thick to allow the hinge to work properly, why he had said they would work I will never know.
There was no question, installing these new hinges was obviously a project better suited for a professional cabinet maker with extensive experience, it certainly was not a project for amateurs like us.
It now appeared that not even one thing that the vendor had told us was true.
We studied the situation over, and over, and eventually determined that the long TREX board pieces he gave us might work if its 1/2 inch thickness could be milled down to 1/4 inch.
Fortunately, we just happened to have a professional carpenters Dewalt wood milling machine in our utility room, and we were able to mill the TREX down to the correct 1/4 inch thickness.
Milling the white plastic TREX produced volumes of white sawdust. The stuff filled our yard just as if it was snowing, it was a mess.
Fortunately we had an industrial size shop vacuum , left over from when we did our renovations.
I then went to use the stainless screws that the hinge fellow had given us to use.
That’s when we found out they were all special oddball size indented square drive screws.
Fortunately we had a bench grinder and I was able to grind down a Philips bit to make it fit the screws.
It was then that I noticed that the square drive screws he gave us were all too long to use anyway.
Fortunately, we had some of our own stainless Phillips head screws to use.
My wife and I had now worked almost an entire Saturday on the project, and we had used every carpenter’s tool in our possession.
Even with that, we had only finished one set of locker doors.
On Sunday morning, we made our only trip the hardware store for more stainless screws, and we finally mounted the last two locker doors.
It had only taken us a day and a half of labor, a wood milling machine, a cut off saw, an industrial vacuum, and every single carpenter’s tool we owned, to do the job.
My wife says that if we ever meet the lying bastard who sold us the easy to install hinges, she would thank him, and tell him we easily installed the hinges in 30 minutes, and they were a perfect fit.
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