Monday, March 21, 2005

Household Projects for the Home Improvement Impaired

One of the doors to our bedrooms upstairs has a cheap locking knob - it is really ugly: faux gold as opposed to the more workman-like unfinished steel passage sets on the other doors. I've been told the previous tenant was a single mother with 3 teen-aged daughters, so I suspect that one of them installed the locking knob herself.

Beyond its appearance, the truly unfortunate aspect to this situation is that Melissa and Madeleine got the room with the door with this knob on it, and we've already had them lock themselves out of their own room a time or two. Thankfully we have a key for it, but the annoyance factor is sure to wear over time.

My friend Richard, who died a few years ago, was a locksmith by trade and he taught me some of the finer points of installing door hardware. The end result of which is that I know how much it will cost to replace this unappetizing bit of hardware with something decent, but I just can't justify spending the cash to do it right when what exists is serviceable. What to do?

Tonight I hit on the answer while dealing with the girls and their perpetual mess. I threatened to remove their door if they didn't get their mess dealt with right away. As they were considering the level of my seriousness, a bright idea hit me. I got my screwdriver and proceeded to remove the hinge pins on their door. Well, you should have seen the flurry of activity that took place after I took their door away.

5 minutes later I had the door off our bedroom - which is just down the hall. I replaced it with the girl's door. 5 minutes later I had our door installed in the girl's doorway.

Voila! Problem solved. The girls can no longer lock themselves into their room - whether on purpose or not. And we can lock our door, or not, as the need arises.

1 comment:

Gail at Large said...

If Michael is anything like you as a child, Allan, he'll figure out some way of picking the lock. Beware!