Blog Extra: Home Maintenance Hell

I had an idea of a post for today, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m frazzled at the moment. I had a major door malfunction this morning… So about two hours ago, I was in my living room, trying to turn the doorknob to access my bedroom… and the doorknob will not turn! My two bedroom abode suddenly became a one bedroom with storage you cannot access, because not only had the key been thrown away, the powers-that-be welded the door shut.

Unfortunately, I needed access to that room immediately.

Now ordinarily, as a renter in an emergency, you would first call your landlord for assistance. I do not have that option. My landlord is about 95 years old, never in town and even if he was, from car to front door, it would have taken an hour to come rescue me. I did not that have kind of time. Oh, and he would have raised my rent in the process. So any condo maintenance issues outside of major ones are handled by yours truly.

No Disrespect. Service with a scowl...

 

 

For your reference

So without any knowledge or even a clue of what I was doing, I took the knob off, and tried to jiggle the latch mechanism, but I saw that this action made everything worse. I now had absolutely no hope of getting access at all, because:  1.) I couldn’t take the door off the hinges, as the hinges were on the other side of the door; and  2.) No credit card or pliable plastic contraption was going to get in easily between the latch and the doorstop, as the latch mechanism was completely stuck into the doorstop. You could see from the hole in the door that the entire system failed – the deadlatch was totally FUBAR. I would have basically have had to cut through the deadlatch metal to get out. My dilemma was compounded by a decision by my landlord (or a previous tenant) to paint over the screws, strike plates and latch in a fit of laziness. The damn thing was completely stuck.




So in a panic, I consulted Google and put a Facebook status update up for my friends to respond to and went to work again on the door with my novice self.

But I must admit, it would have been kinda fun...

After contemplating if I would have to break down the door S.W.A.T. style, I decided to keep the damage to a minimum (for now) and tried to jiggle the latch some more with a screwdriver. After fifteen minutes of absolutely no progress, I looked to my left and saw my bathroom door. A light bulb went up over my head. I took the doorknob off my bathroom door, stuck the knob with the screwposts and spindles into the bedroom door hole and turned that mf-er like their was no tomorrow. In one last fit of life, the latched turned.

After reassembling my bathroom door, (and while my cat was sneaking into the bedroom to sleep under the bed – a big no-no around these here parts)… I scraped all the layers of paint off the doorknob and took the whole thing out of the door completely. Nope, this doorknob is beyond all hope and resuscitation. The deadlatch will never move the latch in the doorstop again. So a trip to Home Depot is in my future. For now, a screwdriver pried into the doorstop is the only thing that is keeping the cat out of the bedroom. (And yes, the cat now is safely where she belongs now – beside me, being as annoying as possible!)




I truly hate my house, and can’t wait to move sometime in the near future. But I do know now that I was lucky this time around. It could have been one thousand times worse… I could have been locked in my bedroom. I would have had no access to my tools to get out of said room; and no computer or phone to call for help. Literally, my only option would have been to open a window (which now I notice has a beehive with about 20 bees making honey at the moment…) and yell for help (as I get stung).