Way Beyond Bad

It's been almost a week since I last reported in, so I thought I'd catch you up on the latest happenings here at the Green Acres Garage. Gary hasn't spent a lot of time on my repairs. There are lots of other things to be worked on around here besides me, so he's been doing a little of everything. I haven't been totally neglected though, so let me explain what you're looking at in the pictures above. As you can see in the first picture, the plywood behind my door that the door frame attaches to is in two pieces. It's not a crack in the plywood, but simply the way I was made at the factory. A combination of the door frame being screwed into the plywood, and the million staples that the factory put into my original kitchen cabinets, kept these two pieces of plywood in straight alignment. Well, when Gary bought me and tore out all of my old and damaged kitchen cabinets, that took away some of the support that held the plywood in place. There was no problem with that for several years. The door frame by itself was enough to hold the plywood firmly in place. But, when my door swung open and ripped the screws completely out of the plywood, that eliminated the support. My upper kitchen cabinet and it's contents added weight to push the upper section of the plywood outwards. It is necessary for the plywood to be in alignment so there is no gap at the top of my door frame. With a gap, my door didn't close properly either. Am I making sense? If I wasn't here experiencing all of this, it wouldn't make sense to me. I'm hoping that all of my readers are more mechanically knowledgeable than I am. Anyway, Gary had to remove my upper kitchen cabinet to eliminate the weight on the bulging plywood, and to have access to the problem area for repairs. He temporarily got the pieces of plywood in alignment with a 2x4 and some clamps. They can't stay there, of course, but the goal was to see if alignment would be possible without having to go further. Going further would make things much more complicated, so I won't even go into that. As you can see in the second picture, the 2x4 and clamps made alignment easy. Since the door frame alone will no longer keep the plywood in alignment with the screw holes ripped out, the plan at the moment is to sandwich the plywood between the door frame and a piece of thick aluminum angle. Machine screws will be put all the way from the outer door frame, through the plywood, and through the angle aluminum to achieve the desired alignment. My upper kitchen cabinet will be modified or totally rebuilt to hide the angle aluminum, and to add some additional support to the two pieces of plywood. Now that I've attempted to explain all of that in a way that I hope you all can understand, I'll move on to another problem, my door frame. The four pieces of the frame were originally welded together. The bottom piece has been broken off since before Gary bought me. The welds on the upper corners are barely hanging together, and there's a large crack across the top edge. So, Gary cleaned up the frame, and took it to his buddy at the welding shop this morning for repairs. While he was out, he also went to the A/C fabrication shop, and ordered the aluminum panels to build my new door from. He has cleaned all of the old butyl tape off of my skin, and will strip the remains of my original aqua and white paint off from under the area where the door frame mounts on. Nobody will ever see this area, but Gary won't be happy until I'm ALL silver. That's about all I can tell you for today. Once my parts are back, I'm sure I'll get worked on from time to time between all of the other things that Gary has going on. And whenever something happens, you'll know about it almost as soon as I will. Thanks for reading, and check back often.