Polishing my knobs

While I was out at Home Despot fetching some more gravel, I took a stop by the door section to pick up some hinges to replace the ugly ones on my furnace room door.

Ah, delightful.

I also finally got over my indecision and waffling and bought a new set of exterior door knobs and a fancy new deadbolt.

I got a keypad deadbolt for the front door so that I never have to have key-anxiety anymore when I'm heading out of the house. I'll still take a key of course, but it can stay safely tucked in my pocket while I use the keypad to open and close the door. Neat.

You might notice that the handle below the deadbolt is actually a bathroom knob rather than a keyed exterior knob, and there's a good reason for that. You see, the interior doors had been all upgraded to matching new levers, except that for some reason the lever leading into the master bath was a mismatched style. So I grabbed one of the correct style while I was shopping and, since I don't really need a locking handle on the front door with this fancy-pants deadbolt, I installed the one I'd taken from the master bathroom there. Conveniently, and not coincidentally, it happened to be the same style I bought for all the other doors.

I went with this style rather than the style matching the existing handles because A: it matched the leftover from the master bathroom, B: it was available with a tool-free rekeyable tumbler, and C: it's my house and I do what I want. They rekeyable tumbler is the same variety that the deadbolt has too, so I now have one key that opens every exterior door in the house.

Which is to say I actually have 6 keys that open every exterior door in the house, as, without having planned it and/or noticed, I grabbed 3 locksets off the shelf with matching key codes, each of which came with 2 keys. The deadbolt had a different key code, but I was able to use the rekeying feature to make it match the handles.

This is a huge improvement over having only one key that opens the front door deadbolt, and no keys that open any other locks in the house including the front door handle.

Three of the five doors (front door, and both garage doors) were a mess of beaver chewed wood and stripped out screw holes, so I ended up spending a few hours struggling to make things fit properly. Thankfully I had some left over 5/8" dowel so I could drill out the screw holes and glue in dowel sections to rescue the situation. All the exterior doors are slated for replacement at some point though, so it need only be a temporary fix.

I might want to push up the schedule for that replacement, considering the neon yellow furry mold that was growing inside the exterior garage door. Something tells me that door is not long for this world.