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). Now it says 'insulated core in the description. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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've never cut metal before so I don't know if that is 'normal'. 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. You can see that it's not exactly straight in the above picture. 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. 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. 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). I didn't use the sticky tape because I needed to get things to line up properly & it would have gotten in the way. 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. #MOTHER EARTH NEWS VEGETABLE GARDEN PLANNER TRIAL#Īfter a bit of trial and error, I finally got three of the bolts through with the help of a clamp, tape, and patience. The first two bolts went through just fine ( put them diagonally from each other in opposite corners). 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. I bent a couple of bolts but I bought extra just in case. The last bolt decided to be a royal pain in the keester. The foam disintegrated in that corner (which is why I wanted to use tape over it) so the bolt moved too much inside once it passed through the first layer of steel. That one proved frustrating enough that I had to take a breather for a couple days so I didn't get mad and break something. I brainstormed on the best way to get the bolt through and when I felt confident enough I went back down to try again. I used a flashlight to make sure the hole was clear, tipped the door up on it's side at an angle so I could reach through, and got the bolt to line up with the hole on the other side, but every time I went to use the screwdriver to turn it to go through it would slip out of alignment. Eventually I had to line it up with the hole and then smack it with a mallet, but that mofo finally went in. I secured all of the bolts with nuts but I didn't like how the nuts could slip into the holes slightly, which would allow the pet door to come loose. So I bought some washers for it, clamped the pet door, removed the nuts, slipped the washers on, then put the nut back on and repeated with each bolt. #MOTHER EARTH NEWS VEGETABLE GARDEN PLANNER TRIAL#.
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