Doorknob Forensics

Okay, the title says doorknobs, but I'm really talking about the entire mechanism, not just the knobs. I'm going to tell you, right now, you can tell a lot about what goes on inside a place, by checking out the doorknobs.

Okay, it's now 10am of the morning after I started that paragraph. Yesterday was a long day. I just spent an hour or so emailing and calling people to deal with a minor glitch.

Doorknobs, handles, strikers, etc. My level of irritation at the moment is ...well...very high. So I went in to rekey the locks of a rental that had been vacated the day before. Usually I do it immediately, but it was one of those days when everything was scheduled and more events popped up, but I wanted to get the keys back from the renter ASAP.

The "man of the house" thought of himself as something of a handyman. He fixed a couple things for me. Things that he or someone in the house broke. I'd spoken to him, the lady, and the kids of the house about slamming doors and security screens. Evidently no one listened. The doors were slammed so much that the striker latches are pretty well worn down. The door knobs came loose and evidently the renter stripped the screws or lost them, because the machine thread screws in two of the eight handles were replace with coarse drywall screws; effectively ruining the handles for future use. The backset inside one of these handles was also broken, which would explain the complaint about the door being hard to open.

Over the last 12 years I've accumulated a lot of locks and pieces. Now I just have to spend the time fixing and wondering about some people's children.