Basement Door Renvovation, Pt. 7 (!)

Finally starting to see the light at the end of this project.  I "only" have to correct the striker issue and prep and paint the interior door.

In my last installment, I had used the storm door's striker plate as a guide to chop out a hunk of wood to enable the striker to sit below the surface of the door jamb.

Does that make sense to you?  I have no idea what I just wrote!

Anyway.  I grabbed my trusty X-Acto knife, and armed with a new blade, scored the outline of the plate.  The picture makes it look like I am Super X-Acto Boy™, but I am not.  I wouldn't dare freehand this - I used the plate as a guide. 

Now a little digression/background.  About a year ago, I bought some old chisels at an estate sale.  As I have Big Plans for some guitar and ukulele work in the future, and I had no chisels, this seemed like a good idea.  However, after trying to sharpen them, I found out that they were not very good quality, hadn't been sharpened in years, and were not worth saving.  

But recently, I bought a decent-but-inexpensive set of chisels at the Big Box store.  I figured they'd get me started until I could justify buying some really good quality chisels.

And it turns out that this was the perfect first job for my new chisels. 

To cut the mortise (see what I learned?) in the door, I used a 3/4 (19mm) chisel set at about a 45 degree angle and used my wooden mallet to drive it. 

In no time at all, I had a series of cuts in the jamb.  Hey!  This woodworking stuff is fun!

Then I cut across the first cuts and removed the scrap.

This is pretty basic stuff, but I admit I was pleased as...ok, punch...with myself!

Look out koa, here I come.

Can you believe it?  A halfway decent mortise.

Although I got too exuberant near the end and hacked up a bit of the edges.  Oh well, it's a learning process.  Better here than on a guitar, huh?

Test fit - it clears perfectly.

You can see why I had to mortise the jamb to fit the plate.  There was just no clearance between the handle and the door jamb.

I'll just fill the excess width with some spackling.  The fit was close, and then I took off too much wood in trying to trim it - hence the extra width in the mortise.