keyless

A few weeks ago, conveniently during our annual ugly Christmas sweater party, the doorknob to our back door decided to just stop working. Somehow twisting the knob no longer did anything rendering the door inoperable while our house was completely full of guests. I can't say I shed many tears though as this gave me the perfect opportunity to replace it with the keyless version I'd been wanting.

I don't have a great before photo (shocker right?) but here's a nice one of the door taken while we were painting the outside of the house.


What I didn't know, is that for some reason, hardware manufacturers everywhere decided they would not make this in black. Wish I had known that before installing a black mailbox, doorbells, light fixtures, address numbers and painted the front door hardware black. I debated buying whatever color was cheapest and spray painting it black to match but at $120 for the doorknob it wasn't worth risking. We ended up buying this one, which was simply the darkest oil rubbed bronze we could find and of course no one but me would notice the discrepancy (and well, now anyone who reads this). We installed a new deadbolt to match as well as a new knob on the door to the garage which is just across the carport from this.

and here's my shiny new latch with keypad (paint touch up on this door is on the spring to do list)


The next challenge though was that the holes for our deadbolt and knob were too close together for the battery pack casing on the inside.  Bryce was able to figure out how to install that part upside down although the batteries inside needed help from a little tape to hold them in place.