Locked and Loaded

Isn’t it great when a calm, relaxing weekend actually results in something productive?  Mr. Great Indoors and I had one of those this past weekend.  Time with friends and a good bike ride on Saturday, and then some house-related retail therapy on Sunday.

Our project this weekend was to replace the locks on our side and front doors.  I'd been having issues the past few weeks with my key (it wasn't catching the lock, so I had to stand in front of the door for five minutes every time jiggling it... annoying).  We were also not quite sure when the locks were replaced last and didn't really relish the idea of any former tenants attempting their old keys.  So we finally bit the bullet and set off to get new locks.  Unfortunately, the Lowe's right down the road didn't have many interesting locks in our price range (like this one... blah), and off we went to the Home Depot across town.  They had a slightly different selection, and we ended up deciding on a set by Defiant in Satin Nickel that came with two deadbolts, two handles, and four keys (unfortunately, I couldn't find the same product online).  Perfect for our front and side doors!  In addition to the lock set, we also bought a can of Rustoleum Satin Nickel to match the door guard to our fancy nickel knobs.  More about that in a minute.

As soon as we got home, Mr. GI hunkered down rekeying our doors.  Here's the front and back of the side door before he started.  Get out of here, nasty bronze!

It's pretty simple to replace door locks:  unscrew the locks currently on the door and replace it with the new ones.  Try not to lose any small pieces along the way.  Doesn't Mr. GI make it look even easier than that?

Then he set to work with his awesome spray painting skills (he also has crazy nunchuck skills and bow hunting skills.  Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills).  He's demonstrating good spraying technique (see that side-to-side motion?), which Kate and Sherry can tell you more about if you're interested. 

And the finished product!  Purdy.  It's like Fort Knox up in this place.

Too bad the nice shiny locks make our poor door look like we've forgotten about it.  I think I'll tackle repainting the doors at a time when it's not 100+ outside every day.  I've got some scraping in my future, that's for sure.  

And it's sort of scary to look at the damage to the door (the reason there's a door guard in the first place).  At some point somebody really tried to get into our house.  Thankfully, it was before we moved in.

We also made a few other purchases while we were out, including a new filter.  Check out our old one -- yuck -- and the portion of the new one that wouldn't fit since we bought the wrong size (because of the size of our intake, we can either use size14x14 or 16x16, but we actually got 18x18).  Live and learn.  And be resourceful.

And here's the watering can we literally ran all over town to find.  Why is it that no one carries attractive, timeless watering cans any more?!?  We probably went in eight or ten stores Sunday and found ONE STORE that had real watering cans-- not those plastic phonies that come in disgusting colors.  Of course, that one store happened to be the last store we went in... three miles from our house... after we had already trekked about twenty miles across town and back.  But at least we found it, right? And for only thirteen buckaroos!  Thanks, Tractor Supply!  Totally worth it.

By the way, I wasn't endorsed by any of these stores.  I'm just super thrilled we knocked (haha, get it?) some projects off our ever-expanding list!  Here's the breakdown of our lock project spending:

• Defiant deadbolt set in satin nickel $32.97
• Rustoleum Metallic Satin Nickel $7.28
• Strike plate $2.07
• Total $42.32

Not a bad price for safety, especially considering the set we bought was almost half of what we'd pay for other brands like Kwikset.

Who else was busy around the house this past weekend? Any fun projects?

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