Hanging my first door, hearing it close with a successful click, was a major thrill. It couldn’t have been an easier door to hang, but it was still soo satisfying.

Cost: $21 at Lowes for a 24-inch hollow unfinished flat surface luan interior door. What I used to pay a contractor to hang a new door varied, but anywhere from $50 to $150, guesstimate.

For an expert the job would have been a no brainer because the old broken door was right there with the knobs in place. There was no trimming required, I had the three hinges and the door frame was fine with the striker plate in place. It was just a matter of exactly copying the hinge cutouts and the holes for the knobs.

Even so, I sweated it. And I didn’t have the perfect tool for the cutouts. I laid the old door on the new door and marked the location of the hinges, then traced the semicircular hinge on the door edge. I could see that the prior contractor used a tool that cut the exact shape and depth of the hinge in one fast move. I found out later the thing to use is a router with a hinge template, which I guess I should invest in since I have 32 interior doors among those four student ghetto units and some years more than half of them get smashed. The door frame often breaks along with the door, but that’s another chapter.

I did my hinge cutouts with my multi tool and a chisel — outlined the cut with the multi tool and then chiseled it out with small cuts until the hinge laid in there level with the surface.

I practiced four times on the old door before cutting into my pristine $21 door, which was actually pretty good looking. Really butchered the test door on the first try but each subsequent cut got closer to adequate as I learned to control the chisel.

Even so, each hinge cutout took 15-20 minutes and still looked choppy. It was hard to manage the depth of the cut. I worried that would make the door hang unevenly, but it worked.

The doorknob hole was easy — traced the old door, drilled a pilot hole and then one plunge with the right-sized hole saw from my lovely collection of new drill bits that goes with my lovely new cordless drill, a practical gift from a thoughtful friend.

I was grateful to get that drill and I’m grateful every time I drill a hole. Still, I wonder why some girls attract pretty, frivolous presents, serious bling, companions, and money, while I attract hardware. I’ve been a pretty good person; I wonder exactly which forks in the path of life sent me to this cold, solitary place.

Sometimes I wonder. Most of the time I’m just happy to have good tools.

When I got to the latch edge, again a router would have done it right. Used the 1-inch hole saw for whatever you call that part of the latch that comes out of the door knob and goes into the striker plate. With a router I could have made a shallow indentation around that hole for the plate that surrounds that thing whose name I don’t know.

As it was, I installed the edge plate on the surface as neatly as I could. It looked OK and worked fine. But I’m glad it’s not my bathroom door, where I’d see that imperfection several times a day.

You can see from the photo of the old door cutout that a router did the job perfectly and fast. I’m shopping for one. A little router you can carry around costs about $100. And a set of door templates costs about $10.

Probably should have stained the door before I hung it, but I was too anxious to see how it would hang. I drilled the nine holes for the hinge screws and hoisted it into the frame, using my toe and the handle of my hammer to level it while I turned the screws.

After the major satisfaction of hearing it close neatly without dragging anywhere on the frame, I gave it two coats of Minwax PolyShades American Chestnut colored stain/ polyurethane combo. There are so many different shades of stain on the woodwork in that place, but the chestnut looks OK.

It’s a light door, it’s a cheap door, but I gotta say, it looks as good as that kind of door can look. The job I did was just as good as anything done by the last professional contractor that worked in that place, and waay better than the crappy work done by the last couple of handymen I hired.