It lasted until I went into the bathroom for my morning wash. There, the upper hinge of the door fell off the frame. A quick glance showed three screw heads and stumps on the floor. I presume they were B & Q prepack screws as supplied with the hinges, which are usually weaker than any serious screws should ever be, but as I didn’t fit the door, that's just my guess.

I managed to push the door back into the frame and shut it, hoping I could deal with this mishap another day. After all, nothing was going to stop me going out. Naturally, it was not quite that simple. Having managed to push the now semi-detached door into position from the inside I discoverd on leaving the room this could not be done from the outside, and the unlatched door was decidely unstable when supported only by the floor and the bottom hinge. If left like that I realised it could soon break the remaining screws or the frame and topple over onto the bathroom suite, breaking hundreds of pounds-worth of china. I would have to be late starting my ride. This needed fixing first.

Since the remaining halves of the screws were still buried deep in the frame, it was obvious I could not refit the hinge in the same place. I would have to move it a little so the new screws could miss the old. The door would have to come off so I could cut a new rebate in it and the frame to enable me to hang it again from a slightly different position. It was time to go down to the garage and fetch some tools: a set of chisels, a hammer, a drill and some bits and a box of suitable screws. Then I found the hinge had seized up, so I also needed to scrape paint off it and oil it to get it moving again. I oiled the other one for good measure. I cut a new rebate in the door, keeping the depth the same as the old one. I drilled pilot holes and fitted the hinge. Then I propped the door up on a spacer and marked the frame to drill pilot holes in that. Six screws later I had the door hung, but it wouldn’t close. I realised the rebates were too deep. Had that been what had stressed the screws and eventually pulled the heads off? I found some cardboard and spaced them out. People say that’s bad practice but it’s always worked well in the past for me.

Eventually I got the door on again, spaced correctly from the frame, but it still wouldn’t close. The top of the door and the transom of the frame were not quite parallel, and the door was now slightly higher than it had been, so the two collided when they met. It was only a millimetre or so and I thought it would be far too difficult to move it down that little bit as there wouldn’t be room for the new screw holes, so I decided to return to the garage and fetch a plane.

I tried to plane down the top of the door, but nothing seemed to happen. After around half an hour it occurred to me the plane might be blunt, so I took the blade out and went downstairs to look for a grindstone. I put that on the kitchen table and stroked the blade across it doing my best to hold it at the right angle. After a few minutes I dragged my finger gently across the blade (not along it, of course. I didn’t want to go to A and E). It felt much sharper so I went back upstairs to refit it to the plane. Now I could actually shave the door down. Eventually I got the door to close, just about, though it’s still tighter in the frame than it should be, presumably because now I’ve spaced the hinges better it’s closer to the opposite jamb. Well, it’ll do for now. Except, it wouldn’t latch. I needed to move the striker plate up to match the slightly increased height of the door, so back to the chisels and the drill (which, of course, by now I had put back away) so another garage trip was needed. I finally finished the job just after one in the afternoon.

So, that cycle ride nothing was going to stop me doing? Well, something did. It was a bathroom door.