It’s to the surprise of no one that the theoretical plan of replacing the French doors with a single door made from half of the original is a messy, impossible task. On paper it looked lovely. In practice, filling the wall is impossible, the door doesn’t line up right, nothing looks good and our family is frustrated. They begin calling the dismantled door the ‘fre do’, (half of french door) which is hilarious to them in their pushed to the edge states.
There is wordless grunting, helpless pointing, and a lot of shouting about the ‘fre do’. One family member holds up the door, another tries to line up the holes in the wall, and the third directs in what devolves quickly into a bad and inexplicable French accent.
Finally, to the surprise of no one, they give up. The door is broken, the wall is ruined, and everyone is tired. They plan to regroup the next day.

In their minds, this was how it was going to look by the end of the day.

It was not.
By the next morning, they have all unanimously and individually decided the door isn’t working. They need to make a new game plan. They decide to pull a counter from the kitchen downstairs to asses how bad the gap is.

It’s not as bad as they feared but it is infuriating. The double doors don’t quite fit but leaving a gap looks awkward. They could leave it, but it doesn’t feel right to, and at this point the war between them and the doorframe feels personal. What fills in gaps like that?
They eat their breakfast at the table, staring at the frame, thinking.
Finally, obvious in retrospect, it hits Kelly; the solution.
A window.

This is why we are here. These strange, odd looking half-solutions which will leave future generations pondering the question ; why is this here? Why is there a strange, clipping window into the laundry room? Was the builder drunk? Was the family just that dedicated to looking at their laundry? Did they have extra (very nice and expensive) french doors just…laying around? Small objects like tooth picks, grapes, ice cubes, bits of cheese…will fall between the counter and the window for years, creating timestamped layers of life visible from the other side, but not retrievable.
Someday a small child will sit and stare at those layers and consider why there is a window there, both completely reliant on, and entirely unaware of, the day our family has just had.
It will be gross and wonderful.
Spoiler Warning

A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Batman: Arkham Origins

A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
Silent Hill Turbo HD II

I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Programming Language for Games

Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
Quakecon 2011 Keynote Annotated

An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Well I didn’t intend my comment last week to be foreshadowing!
Wait, i thought they were going to run the plumbing for the sink through the wall the window is now in…
I really appreciate how you go into the thinking of the family on these choices. :)
My housemate’s father considers himself something of a handyman, in addition he is the kind of person who has strong opinions on everything and generally believes he always knows best. As a result of this the apartment has a bunch of questionable idiosyncrasies that my housemate has been slowly scraping off as time, resources and willpower allows in the decade or so since her parents moved out into the country. We’ve had a bunch of conversations that go along the lines of “Why is this like this?” “Dad” and there is one setup (in the toilet of all places) that we just refer to as “dad’s piece of string” that is deeply precarious but would be an absolute pain both in terms of the amount of work and the amount of money it would take to replace so we’re just praying it holds.
I feel sorry for this fictional family that has been defeated by a door!
I hope they find a creative solution in the next installment, or I will be sad.