Last night around 8:30 pm I finally sat down to relax and watch a movie. Ten minutes later my youngest comes in and tells me that she is locked out of her room and can’t get in. I go and try to open the door but something in the latch mechanism must have broken off. The knob would turn but the door would not open. This is not good. The screws to take the knob apart are on the other side of the door. I figure that I would try the old credit card trick using a Circuit City gift card that was long forgotten and obviously no longer valid. This was easier said than done. It took more than 20 minutes of trying to force the card through the door jamb area to push on the latch bolt. I thought that any second that my fingers were going to slip and the card was going to slice into my hand. Finally the door popped open.
After the door knob was off it wasn’t too late so I decided to try and find a store that was open all night. My youngest and I piled in the car and was on our way. Half way there I receive a phone call from my oldest who just returned home from work. She tells me that her key had broken off in the back door lock. What! I ask her, “Are you kidding me!” I tell her why we were gone and she says she has a key for the front. K-mart was the first store that was still open so we went in there. I found a door knob and had another key made as well. As we arrived back home I was worried that part of the key that was broke off in the back door lock was going to be stuck way up inside the knob and not come out. This would mean another trip to the store for another lock. Luckily there was enough of the key sticking out to grab and it slid out with ease. That was one late night disaster averted.
Removing the lock from its packaging, I inserted the new latch mechanism in the door and screwed it into place. The door knobs were a different story. On the inner part of both knob assemblies were little tabs protruding out about 3/8 of an inch. These tabs weren’t on the original knobs and they prevented the new knobs from sitting flush against the surface of the door. This also caused the distance between the 2 knobs to be greater than the length of the attaching screws. Since by now it was nearly 11:00 pm and the new latch mechanism was already in place I hoped to use the old knobs for now. They worked. I’ll grind the tabs off the new knobs today and hopefully they’ll fit.
So, were you able to grind off the tabs and make the knob work right?
I ended up taking a pair of needle nose pliers and bending the tabs until they broke off. Once that was done the door knob fit perfectly.