Church and Doors

On the first Sunday after Christmas, many parish groups take the opportunity (after all the efforts leading up to the main event) to combine all of their services into one. The Saltway Team (Drrotwich, Salwarpe, Hindlip and Martin Hussingtree) is no exception and all the congregations were gathering this year at Salwarpe. Although this tiny hamlet (no idea how it came to have such a substantial ancient church) is close to the edge of the town it feels somewhat remote and is at the end of a road with just the one entrance/exit.

As a result the church was almost full and parking was at a premium. We ended up having to go back to the village hall and then walking down the road, getting to the church just on time!

It was a reasonably conventional communion service with an interesting sermon, led by the vicar. We recognised most of the choir from St Peter's church where we have otherwise been.

We returned to the boat and before long it was time for lunch. Afterwards Mike started on the maintenance work which had been put off from yesterday. Two of the internal doors were sticking and hard to close, it at all. We removed a small amount from one door earlier in the year and were still reluctant to remove too much in case the wood shrinks in the future and leaves too much of a gap.

The task is not complicated but as always something turns difficult. In this case the screws which our builder had used are not a good fit with our screwdrivers and had probably been mechanically inserted. As a result it took rather longer than expected to remove the first door (between the front cabin and the walk through bathroom) Once that was done and the hinges removed from the door it was relatively easy to plane off a thin strip from the hinge side of the door (adjusting the outer edge is harder as it then means that the door handle and latch need corresponding adjustment. using the back edge means that only the insets for the hinges need re-cutting.

Once that door had been fixed back in place (and now closes) the second one was tackled, this time taking a little less time, especially as all the necessary tools were  now in place.

It was sunset before we had finished and cleared up - we did take the doors out onto the back to plane off so reducing the amount of shavings to brush up but did need to bring them back inside to do the chiselling to refit the hinges.

We were keen to get the doors working properly today as tomorrow we pick up two grand daughters from Windsor who are staying over for New Year's Eve.