Saving hundreds with new door locks

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On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Cheap and I spent about 3 1/2 hours replacing five door locks. At the time, I wouldn’t have said I was glad I was doing it — rather, I was yearning to sit down with a cup of tea, maybe veg out with my spinning wheel and some TV or a good book; perhaps even take a nap.

But by Sunday night, I was glad I had done it, and here’s why.

The debacle started on Saturday when I came home, inserted my key in the deadbolt on the security door, turned it and — the key broke off in the lock. We tried to fish it out so that we could simply keep using our old keys, but it didn’t work. And, the lock had security features, so you couldn’t simply unscrew the cylinder and remove it (or we couldn’t figure out how). The real clincher, however, was that the lock really hasn’t been working properly for about a year. (If it had been, we would have worked harder to find a way to get the cylinder off and replace it.)

Fortunately, one might have thought, we could use the lock on the handle of the security door. Uh … no. That handle has never worked right, either.

That leaves us with the inside door. Just lock that, right? It had a deadbolt up high and a handle with lock below. Well … we don’t have a key to either lock. So that deadbolt was out. We could lock the bottom handle from inside, but not open it from outside (which, on two accidental occasions, led me to experiment with innovative ways to break into our home, before we changed the lock on the back door so that we had a key to that security door).

As an added bonus, the back security door has never had a knob, but has had the hole covered with duct tape so wasps won’t nest there. We’ve opened it with a key, probably stressing that key so that it, too, might break off soon.

If all these explanations lead you to the question, “What kind of clowns would live with a situation like this?”, the answer is: “Never mind.”

The point is, when one door lock broke, it led to a cascade of necessary door repairs.

The buys

On Sunday, off I went to our local home improvement store. I asked a worker there about replacing the cylinder on our deadbolt, and he said he had no idea, and no one was working who could help me, either. In the interest of time, I threw out the cylinder-replacing option and decided we’d replace everything and make the doors look nicer, too. (Bonus: If you follow feng shui principles, replacing and having attractive door hardware is supposed to be good for your home’s chi.)

I decided on a brushed silver finish, because we were already planning on repainting our door (which bears the frightful scratches of the previous homeowner’s two Labrador retrievers) red or blue this summer. I found one handle/deadbolt set for the inside door for $89 (this was the price on the shelf and on the register; the floor model was marked $126, which was at the low end of the available models). I liked it because I could work the thumb-press part of the handle without hurting my thumb. I hope this doesn’t mean it won’t last.

Then I bought a set of deadbolt and locking handle for the security door. The finish matches the set on the other door. These cost $59.

... to this.

I added a knob for the back door — just a simple knob on both sides, shiny brass to match the locks, for $9.

We also needed a new drill bit to drill out the old cylinder, and that cost $4. Luckily, we already own a hole saw set, so we did not need to purchase that; it would have added another $20 at least.

Total with tax and after a $10 coupon I’d received in the mail: $174.

The work

Fortunately, Mr. Cheap was here to work on this project too, or it would have taken all day. First off was to locate the hole saw. I’m organized; the rest of my household isn’t particularly. So we divided and conquered: Mr. Cheap searched high and low for the hole saw kit while I took over his job of mowing the back yard. Mlle. Cheap joined in, although after our recent rains the grass was so high it was hard to push the mower. (Her generosity will not be forgotten; now I know she is just about strong enough to mow the lawn!)

While Mr. Cheap drilled out the lock from the front security door, I took the old hardware off the old door. Naturellement, the holes were in the wrong places, or rather, one hole existed that we did not need. Fortunately, I am OK at mechanical stuff, and Mr. Cheap is smart with things like holes in the door that shouldn’t be there. He found a dowel and fitted it into the unneeded hole. As mentioned above, we’ll be sanding and painting the entire door come summer, so the looks don’t really matter. (And that too is VERY fortunate.)

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While he did that, I installed the doorknob on the back security door (piece of cake!).

The handle portion of the front security door went on easily. The time-consuming elements were the interior door hardware and the security door deadbolt.

Useful tips

Here are a few words of advice if you’re installing locks and deadbolts:

Although it was installed correctly, I at first screwed down the security door deadbolt too tightly. This pulled the lock out of true so that the deadbolt was rubbing on the faceplate and not locking/unlocking easily. Loosening the screws just slightly made it work.
Measure twice, cut once. Read instructions thoroughly and take advantage of schematics that show you where to cut.
If you are using a hole saw (or core drill) to cut a bigger hole where a hole already exists, be especially careful (and get an expert to help if you can) — these saws rely on a center point that you will be lacking.
Having a friend handy helps a lot. In our case, to finish installing the interior door handle, I needed to apply pressure in one direction so that Mr. Cheap could tighten down the screws that hold the lock together.

The result? All of our doors now close smoothly and, best of all, lock securely. This is going to be really thrilling after a summer thunderstorm, when in the past, we’ve sometimes awakened in the morning to find that while the security door was still locked, our interior door had been blown wide open because it didn’t latch properly.

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The savings

Here’s where our time gets worthwhile. Our time combined was around 7 hours — let’s say 6 1/2 if we eliminate hunting for the hole saw and mowing the lawn. I’ve replaced a few locks, but we are by no means experts. We estimated a locksmith would likely have taken around 4 hours to do this job. Assuming a locksmith charged around $100 an hour, that would mean we saved $400.

I don’t think our estimate is too far off. This site estimates costs of $120 to $220 for a locksmith to visit a home and replace four locks, but that seems very low for our area. One reader commented that he was charged $120 for one deadbolt only, and our front door hardware was much more complicated.

At the end of the day, it felt great to put my feet up for a few minutes (and finally have that cup of tea). Would I have loved to have my Sunday afternoon back? Oh, yeah. But would I have been willing to pay $400 to knit and watch TV that day? Absolutely not. It was fun to do it together (or at least a relief when I was emitting a stream of bad language and Mr. Cheap ended a phone call with a friend to rescue me while I lay on the floor for a moment). It was easier to concentrate with Mlle. Cheap playing with a neighbor. And in the end, doing it ourselves won again — and now our door looks terrific. Or it will as soon as we remove, sand and paint it. But that’s another story.

Have you done a project like this? Please let us know what I missed … or if you’re a locksmith with tips or comments about what that work would have cost professionally, we’d love to know.

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Comments ( 1 Comment )

When our former landlord lost our keys (how we found out about this is its own story), they said that we could call a locksmith, have their handyman change the locks, or do it ourselves. We opted for choice 3. Based on phone calls to locksmiths for estimates, replacing all 8 locks (2 doors, 2 security gates, 2 locks each) would have cost about $300. Doing it ourselves cost less than $100. And still they fought us over the cost.