Project 1: Changing the Doorknobs

Saturday, my first full day being a homeowner, I started my first project. And in true DIY fashion, it required 2 trips to home depot, a purchase of a tool that didn’t work and way more money than I thought.

When we bought our house it came with one key… you heard me… one.key.  Really? Your family lived there for almost 50 years and you’re going to tell me you have one key on hand? Oh, and it only works on the bottom locks, not the deadbolts.  Man, I feel so safe!  So, my first project is to change out the doorknobs, for both safety and aesthetic reasons.

I’m not going to go step by step because a) I don’t want to bore you b)there are very clear instructions that come in the box and c) it would take FOREVER to type up.  So, I’m going to give you the very basics and then what I learned. That way, if you’re ever installing door knobs yourself, you can read the instructions and then learn from my mistakes.

Quick overview:

I started out great, buying new hardware. I went to Home Depot and looked at all the pretty knobs for the front door and was a little surprised by the prices. But I found one that fit my needs (really the only one that fit my needs, so I’m glad I like the look). I had to have a knob that was round in the inside, instead of having a handle inside. This is because Hyde, my monster of a cat, can open doors that have handles on them. My other requirement was for it to be silver and to be easy to change the locks (so we can make all the doors match). I left Home depot with this:

The big package is a bottom lock and deadbolt for the front door. The other two are sets of bottom locks and deadbolts for our two back doors (we have both a door out of our laundry room and a door out of our living room).

Next I came home and quickly removed the old hardware. I took a picture in mid lock removal just so you can see how it looks (excuse the bad quality, I was using my phone because I was a dummy and left my camera at my in-laws over the weekend).

Next I attempted to install the new locks. I say attempted because this took WAY LONGER than it should have. I learned quite a few things: 

Just because your old doorknob fit does not mean your new doorknob will fit. The ‘standard’ size must have changed in the last 50 years, or at least that’s the only way I can figure out what happened. The actual holes in the door were 1/8” small in diameter than they need to be for new knobs. Oh, and instead of measuring them before I started installing anything, I found this out the hard way. This leads me to lesson two: 

Do NOT install the bolt on the bottom lock and then shut your door to see if it fits correctly. This will result in the door shut without a way to open it. Yes, I totally locked myself in my house on day one of DIY life. Now, normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal. You just take the knob out of the packaging, hold it up to the bolt and fit the parts together so you can turn the bolt and open the door. However, if you were paying attention to lesson one, my door holes were too small to fit the new piece. So I’m sitting there with the new knob that doesn’t fit and thus can’t open the door in one hand, and the old knob that has a different type of lock and thus can’t engage the new bolt in the other hand.   

At this point I can’t believe I just did that. I decide to call LJ, because I’m frustrated and a little worried that I will have to pay a locksmith to help us out. I didn’t want to tell him I was in trouble, I just wanted to hear his voice for comfort. So I believe our conversation was something like this:

Kris “Hey there, do you want to come to the house and bring me a drill bit?” (I was hoping to somehow make the whole big enough to fit the new knob)

LJ “Not really, babe. That’s like an hour of driving. Do you really need one?”

Kris (not wanting to admit a mistake) “No. I’m fine…. So… what ya doing?”

LJ “do you need something? I’m just at home…”

Kris “Oh, ok, cool….. so…. We have a house… that’s cool”

LJ “Um, unless you need something I’m going to go…”

Kris “Oh, ok. I’m good. Don’t worry about me.”

Yeah, I’m so slick. (:  Well, I sat there for about ten minutes and then I finally thought of a solution. I went over to the other old knobs and found one with a similar locking devise as my new knobs. I took it apart, brought it over to the new bolt and held it up. It fit because it too was 1/8” smaller than the new locks and I was able to get the door open. Crisis averted.

So, now I’m there with a door that has two holes that are 1/8” to small. I decide to put that problem down for a minute and go work on the backdoors. After all, if you’ve already destroyed the front door, why not move to the back! 

I easily remove the bottom lock on the back door and then go to install my new knobs and realized I bought the wrong kit. See, the kits I bought have a dead bolt with a switch on the back, not a key. Our doors both have windows on them, which means if I use the switch deadbolt, all someone would have to do is break the window and let themselves in.  So back to Home Depot I go.

I exchanged the lock kits (fyi, the dead bolts with keys instead of switches are more expensive) and bought a 2 1/8” drill hole (to solve my front door problem) and returned home with all the confidence in the world.

Lesson three: if you are drilling a large hole in a door for the first time, a drill hole works great. It has a drill bit down the center that keeps the larger part of the bit steady. If you already have a hole in your door and you’re just trying to make it bigger, a drill hole will just careen off to the side in a very dangerous and destructive path. So, needless to say, when making a 2” hole bigger by 1/8”, a 2 1/8” hole drill is the wrong tool. Grrrrrr dumb doors and their dumb holes.

What was the solution? I ended up getting out a ½” drill bit and just very gently and slowly scrapping the inside of the hole making it wider shaving by shaving. I didn’t want to press too hard because I didn’t want to hurt the drill bit, so this took like 9.5 hours. Ok, it was more like 30-45 minutes, but it felt like f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

The only other part of the install of note was the ½” hole I had to drill through my door to install the bottom part of the outside handle. Drilling this big of a hole was just plane scarry. I kept reminding myself that if I really screwed this up I’d be buying a new door. Here I did something RIGHT. I measured twice and then used a very small drill bit (like ¼”) to make a hole just about a half inch deep in the door. I then re-measured and made sure my hole was in the right place. This was a good idea because it not only acted as a guide for the bigger drill bit, but it would have been easy to plug with wood putty had my initial hole been placed incorrectly. 

So, 4 ½ hours later, I had four doorknobs installed: both deadbolt and bottom lock on the front door and both bottom locks on the back doors. I had to quite at this time because I had other places to be. But those last two deadbolts should be a piece of cake now that I know what I’m doing (should be… but probably wont). 

I’d say the final product was worth it though:

Here is my before and after... Sorry about the bad before, I didn't take a picture from the front (another lesson learned) but the knob and deadbolt looked pretty much the same on the other side, only difference was they had key holes.

Before: front door knob/lock

After: front door knob/lock (bottom of the handle is where I had to drill the 1/2" hole through the door)

Project cost: about $250

Time: 4 ½ hours so far

Difficulty: Not hard for anyone that knows how to use a screwdriver and a power drill.