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Home Renovation Tip 101
Measure twice and cut once.
One of the first rules I learned in do-it-yourself house renovations was “Measure Once, Cut Twice” and of course the reverse, “Measure Twice, Cut Once”.
The latter is definitely the least expensive way to go.
I learned it the hard way. In spite of being told of this rule before I began my amateur carpentering journey, that was one of my first mistakes. I was fitting a new door in an upstairs bedroom and realized I had to trim the edges of the door to get a good fit. I measured the door opening and was on my way downstairs to trim the door down with my skill saw when the phone rang. I spent about 10 minutes on the phone and after hanging up the call, instead of going back upstairs to re-measure, I relied upon my memory which afterwards I found out was not as good as I thought it was.
The door opening was thirty-one and seven eighth inches wide; so I thought. The used door I was fitting was thirty-two inches. So I just needed to trim off an inch and an eighth and it would be a good fit. Wrong. The door opening was thirty, not thirty-one. So I hacked off an inch too much and ended up having to buy another door.
