Skeleton Key: Don't Try This at Home

So here at 83 Durant, we like exploring the sometimes kooky, sometimes curious artefacts that make up a pre-1900 house. We're rather fond of the old doorknobs and locking mechanisms. Jake bought a couple of little brass skeleton keys to see if we could make the locks on the bedrooms work. [Do they sell two packs of skeleton keys for $1.29 in the checkout aisle of your hardware store? It may just be a New England thing.] And it worked! If by worked you meant turned in the lock, causing the locky thing to poke out, and then permanently stay in that position, as depicted here:



THANKFULLY, we tried this out with the door open, so no one was locked in or out. If we had in fact done this with the bedroom door closed and us on the inside, we would have been trapped, and, get this, there isn't even a phone in that room. I seriously have no idea what we would have done.

This has been the state of affairs for about a week. I used the WD-40, and tried very hard to make it move. So hard, in fat, that I broke the little brass key. Awesome.



Today, Jake was in the basement and took a look at that old pile of door hardware. He figured out how the mechanism worked, and then decided to take the lock on the bedroom door apart.

Here's the insides:


That little white piece in the middle is clearly a piece of a coat hanger. Obviously, someone has done a home fix-it job on this before. Jake fixed it right up, put it back together, and now it's working better than ever!



Since he's now a master locksmith, he also took apart the mechanism on the spare bedroom door and got that one up and running (it hasn't worked since we moved in). [That one also had a coat hanger spring which was out of whack]. And then he went and fixed the closet door, too! In fact, as I am typing this, he is walking through the house, checking every single door and doorknob. He's like a super-hero. Old Lock Man. Or something like that. With his trusty screwdriver and needlenose pliers, he saves the nation from troubled doorknobs.