Changing the Locks

Yesterday's post left out the fact that the whole day wasn't rosy. That would've been too good to be true! The evening ended with a splat, actually, more of a thud, when I got possession of the home and tried to change the locks first thing.

First of all, the seller's agent had left the lockbox on the front door know. No, not suspicious at all bringing a doorknob to change the locks with that thing on it.

Second, I could hardly open the locks at all and figure out which of the two keys when to which locks. On top of that, there's a third door to the house that had a mystery lock with no key that I could find anywhere. Strange. At least all the locks came out pretty easily with a simple screwdriver. I had a bag for each set so I wouldn't get the parts confused.

There are two ways to go about changing locks.

1. Cheap way - Keep the existing locks and have them re-keyed, but you will need both the original key that fits into the lock and a new key. Only $5 per lock.
2. Expensive way - Buy all new locks. The deadbolt/knob sets are cheaper than buying the parts separately. The sets I was looking at ran $15-70, depending on sturdiness and finish.

My friend had given me a new key, but unfortunately, they were of different brands, so wouldn't work. So I just ended up getting brand new locks, but still had to get one set re-keyed to the others.

Both my friend and I had similar problems in finding a store with key-making services. Only three Home Depot stores in the metro Atlanta area provide this service: Tucker, Buckhead, and Midtown. I ended up going to the Lowe's on Chamblee because I wanted to get their no-VOC paint (next post). However, one must note that Lowe's only offers this key service if you buy the lock there (not one one you just bring in, like Home Depot). Anyway, Lowe's also has 10% coupons for people moving, which is a really nice incentive with all these pre-moving home improvement projects. Ugh, the agony!!