The last bolt decided to be a royal pain in the keester.
I bent a couple of bolts but I bought extra just in case. The third bolt gave me a little trouble- since the foam was not conducive to making the bolts go through straight- so I had to play around with the angle a bit but got it through. The first two bolts went through just fine ( put them diagonally from each other in opposite corners).
Stacks on main trial#
After a bit of trial and error, I finally got three of the bolts through with the help of a clamp, tape, and patience. I had to redrill some of the holes in the door, wallow out the holes in the plastic a bit to allow the bolts to slide through better, and make numerous adjustments.
I didn't use the sticky tape because I needed to get things to line up properly & it would have gotten in the way. But, the foam was too flimsy so I had to get 3' #6 bolts (I tried 2' but they were too short & I couldn't find 2-1/2' ones locally). That brought me to another problem: the pet door was supposed to anchor to a solid core with #6 screws and bond to the door with doublesided sticky tape. No photo, but I used duct tape to cover the jagged edges, hold the steel tighter together over the center, and cover the foam- particularly in one of the corners where the foam started to disintegrate from where I drilled for the pet door's screws. You can see that it's not exactly straight in the above picture. I had to do a few fittings of the door pieces to see if they would go together and do some trimming on the metal as needed. I've never cut metal before so I don't know if that is 'normal'. I had to rectify it with a Dremel tool & metal cutting blades, although it didn't entirely get rid of tears or jagged edges. I had to flip the door and cut from the other side, but then it didn't want to cut quite evenly & the steel started to bend and tear. Then I cut with a jigsaw blade, which is when I encountered my first problem: The steel moved away from the foam in the center & the longest metal cutting blades I found were just barely long enough to cut through, but because the steel could move, instead of cutting, it just moved up, leaving a dent from the underside. Since I thought the core was wood, I was shocked at how the drill bit just dropped through the center before hitting the steel on the other side. My pet door did not come with a template so I had to make one, trace around it on the door once I measured to get it where I wanted, and drilled holes in each corner to make it easier to cut. Before I even purchased the door, I made an inquiry the manufacturer to make sure it was OK to cut for a pet door & they said it would be fine. Because it's foam inside the steel dents very easily and doesn't stay tight to the foam (like it would if it were adhered to wood) which posed problems when cutting for the pet door. Now it says 'insulated core in the description. This is the door I got (it was listed in the 'solid core' doors when I searched and employees said it had a solid core). I really hated to have to make that decision, but I couldn't let her suffer anymore. She was just in too much pain & her quality of life was only going to get worse.
The vet thought she was a goner two years ago but she pulled through. My dog passed away a few hours after my last post.
This is my fifth attempt to post it because it has just closed the editor without posting when I tried to insert an image multiple times.
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