Lock-a-liscious

Here's a fun fact about our house.  You know that moment where you're all cramped in a tiny room around conference tables signing away the next 30 years of your life to a mortgage payment, and then after your hand is cramped and your signature no longer looks like your signature, the mortgage broker and realtor finally say "Alright, here are the keys to your new house!"  ??  Yeah, that didn't happen with us.  We finished signing everything and were waiting for that moment and everyone kind of sat there like "Now what?"  So I finally asked, after an awkward moment of silence, if we could have the keys to our new house, and everyone kind of looked around at each other like everyone else should have the keys.  No one had the keys to our house!  So in a not so Hollywood moment, we had to call "Al," the now previous owner of our house, and ask him if we could have the keys so we could get in to our house.  Classic.

Our house was purchased by "Al" in the 80's, and he had been renting it out since the early 90's, so for the last 20 + years, people have been in and out of our house, and who knows who still had keys or access to it.  We considered calling a locksmith and having the whole house re-keyed, but after a few estimates and some time spent weighing our options, we decided to just install new door handles and locks.  The existing door knobs were shiny gold and none of them matched, and there were different keys needed for the front and back doors.  In order to play it safe, we just splurged and bought all new door handles and locks for the 3 exterior doors in our house.  We spent the extra money and bought the Schlage re-keyable door handles (from Lowes) so that all the doors could be matched to the same key, and if we ever need to re-key the house, it's super easy to re-do ourselves, without having to call a locksmith, which would cost anywhere from $80-$150.

I have to say, neither Brian nor I have any experience installing a new door knob, and he was able to do this first one in a little over an hour.  The directions were pretty straightforward and everything matched up, which made things easy.

We were warned in the store by another customer that the aged bronze finish scratches easily with keys and such, and she was very adamant that we should go in a different direction, but there weren't really many options and we didn't have time/patience to order something different off the internet, so we went against her advice and purchased them anyways.  They come with a lifetime warranty so we figured if anything went really wrong we could try to exchange them through that, but so far we haven't had any issues. 

They also have only 1 star in the ratings on the Lowe's website, but my only complaint about them is that sometimes the finishes are a little different.  I had to try to match them up in the boxes to make sure I was getting 3 handles that looked alike, and even then one of our knobs is more of a matte finish than the other shiny ones, but not so much that anyone would notice but me.

After Brian got the first one installed it was too late to start the other 2 doors, but we were feeling pretty confident that we could have this project finished in no time.  As you can see from the picture above, we need to sand/repaint our door, but I'm holding out until we paint the exterior of the house.  We have 2 front doors, both of which you can see from the road.  There's the most exterior one which leads to the porch, and then there's the door in the porch that leads to the living room.  I can't decide if I want to paint them both the same color or if I'm going to leave the more interior one white.

You can really see the subtle copper undertones in this picture, which I love, and even though you can see finger prints, the finish really masks them in person, so I'm not constantly having to rub finger prints out.

 

I was busy doing other things while Brian was installing the locks, but from my understanding, I'm pretty sure you unscrew and separate the old handle, and then put all the new parts in place and then screw the new handle together.  Easy as that.  Except for that the other 2 handles didn't match up perfectly.  We just got lucky on the first one.  Mr. H had to come over and help drill and screw some things into place in order to get the other 2 locks to work, but everything worked out in the end and we no longer have to worry about who has a key to our house!  And the best part?  We just have 1 key for the whole house!!

I know it's not the most exciting post but it's essential to a new homeowner, so that's why I'm sharing.  However, living room paint pictures are coming soon, and that IS exciting, so be sure to check back!  

LoL  :)