Embarrassing Mistakes...

I told Nick that if he would take the garbage and recycling out this morning, I’d give him a ride to work. While he was outside, I locked the back door, gathered up our things and was going to meet him in front. Then I hear him at the back door, so I go to unlock it, and he opens it right up before I get there. I had just fastened the dead bolt! We look at each other, very confused, and try it again. Sure enough, there is no way to lock the deadbolt and not be able to open it from the outside. “Hadn’t we checked this when we installed the lock? Didn’t you lock me outside once?” asked Nick. “I thought so.” So we examine the other locks, look at the boxes and see that the lock we had installed had a sticker over the end showing that it had once had a different lock inside. That’s it, we agreed. They had given us the wrong lock. It couldn’t be an error on our part, it had to be someone else’s mistake. (We were quick to blame it on Phil, Nick’s dad, but we had been there for the installation and none of us noticed that you could unlock it from the outside. So we couldn’t really say this was another bad lock experience for Phil.) We made sure the key worked, we just never checked that you needed a key! Upon examining the mortise lock carefully, Nick noticed that the other two locks had a groove in the cylinder that the spindle for the knobs goes through. Without the groove, the knob on both sides of the door can turn and undo the deadbolt. (This took about 30 minutes to figure out.) So we started un-installing the lock, following the directions backwards. We took the mortise set out, installed the other one, and put it back together.

So yes- now our door locks, you can’t open it from the outside and we are dumbfounded how it took us a month to figure this out and that no one has come in and taken all of our tools. It probably helps that I’ve been on summer vacation and am home most of the time. Either that, or it’s our amazing guard cats!

So, while I was driving Nick to work we were trying to figure out why they would even make a lockset where the knob on both sides would be able to open it up. Then it hit me: the front door has a thumbset handleset trim. I bet the lock is for the front door and since they had the same part number, we didn’t think there was a difference. We have now put the French door lock, the front door lock and finally the correct lock in our back door. No wonder they recommend having a locksmith install the locks! Oh well, another trial and error DYI experience!