My Simple House

Let there be Locks!

By Matt - Saturday, October 13th, 2012

Now that we’ve gotten possession of the house there is a burning issue that need to be addressed! We need to change the locks!

With a house that effectively had a revolving front door you never know who might just show up with a key or two and try letting themselves in. Yes there might be nothing of any value in the house but over the years the ‘ole frat boys’ really kept the party going even providing a place to live for people down on their luck.

Now the reason I’m mentioning this is because while its been alluded to a few times with the ‘frat boys’ comments there were more than a couple unsavory characters passing through this house over the years. Our new neighbours seem very friendly but do love to gossip! While I’m fairly sure that none of them will come by the house and try to let themselves in… you never can tell.

The locks have been changed!

The first door presented only a mild challenge in that the screws on the new deadbolt didn’t quite line up making the whole thing hard to screw in. But its in.

Now the second door, taking off the old lock I discovered something interesting. The hole that was in place to hold the lock was considerably smaller than what is a normal size. This didn’t surprise me – the lock looked older than me and over times standard sizes of things change.

The problem is the deadbolt I purchased was new and thus needed the opening in the door to fit what is currently a ‘standard size’ – too bad I didn’t have anything to make said opening.

The front door lock has temporarily thwarted me!!

A couple hours later I returned to the house because the HVAC guy was coming by for an estimate and this time I brought the big guns! The drill and the circular hole implement (yes I don’t know what its called but I do know how to punch round circular holes with it).

This time I won! Hole was punched and the lock installed.

Now no one without a new key can make it in!

The empty house is safe once again!

As an aside: while tackling the demanding task of replacing the locks on the doors I also met with the architect/engineer who we’re getting to plan out the drawings and the HVAC guy to go over the installation of the Furnace and AC.

Things are progressing!

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