Another day has
dawned and it seems pertinent to talk about locks.
Locks are a funny thing. In the great State of
Wisconsin, you have to have an automatically locking front door if you have a
multi-dwelling home. While that might not sound particularly troubling,
consider how many deadbolts you’ve encountered that lock automatically. I’d be
willing to bet it’s not many since I’ve had a time finding one, preferably with
a keypad and that looks period from a distance.
The original deadbolt was long gone but the
door and knob are original and I’m really hoping to bring them back to life.
Serving as the home’s security was a “lock” that had a deadbolt keyhole on one
side and a standard, if flimsy, latch on the other side. The problem here was
two-fold.
The first, and biggest problem, was that this
was directly next to a very large window inset into the door. All a miscreant
need do to gain access to the house was break the glass and turn the latch. The
added problem was that the lock wasn’t even a deadbolt inside the wall, it was
just a push latch like the kind you’d see on an interior door.
Here’s my before – the door needs a little love
but you can see the blegh lock that was in place.
Since the side kitchen door was similarly
afflicted, I clearly couldn’t let these stay too long. As I mentioned, the
eventual goal is to add a keypad lock to the front door in the future but since
those don’t come in double-cylinder (i.e. locked from both sides) deadbolts,
I’ll have to wait until I can order some ironwork for the glass inset.
In the meantime, I found a decent
double-cylinder deadbolt for both doors. The one on the front door will
probably move to the basement once the iron work is in place.
Once I found locks, I didn’t think it would be
particularly challenging to install them. After all, you pull off the existing
lock, insert the new one, bolt it in and go, right? Yeah, I thought so too.
While getting the necessary hardware, the
salesperson reminded me that the old door would likely be splintery and if I
needed to make the opening any bigger for the face of the lock there was a
possibility I’d need to hand chisel it.
Naturally, one piece of the lock body was too
big for the existing hole and, when I went to expand it, the wood splintered
almost instantly. Now, for future reference, the correct tool to use to
expand the hole is a dremel on low speed with a sanding wheel in place.
Think of this sanding like a haircut, you can always take a little more but you
can’t get it back once it’s gone. Since I hadn’t thought of dremeling yet, I
set to the rather time-and-energy-intensive task of chiseling out about an
extra third of an inch around a hole for my lock haircut-style.
While I’ll consider the chiseling a learning
experience, it turned out that the lock didn’t require the hole to be larger
although it did make it stronger. If your instructions have you insert an extra plate in
front of the lock’s body, you might be in a situation like mine where it’s good
to have it if not completely necessary. Feel out the security for your own
home, but for me it would have been nice to know there was an option to install
the lock without an additional plate under the body before spending two
unnecessary hours adapting an old door to a temporary lock.
The kitchen door took me about 15 minutes from
start to finish including some light dremeling to make it easier for the latch
to move. I guess I learned well on the first one!
As for my new lock, I don't have a good (lit)
picture of it on my door but I’ll post that tomorrow evening.
This was one of my highest priority fixes due
to security needs so I’ll count every minute as well spent. If you’re looking
at replacing locks in your home or have done it recently, feel free to pass
along other time saving tips and tricks you’ve found!
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