A locked door with no key can be a frustrating situation.
My granddaughter, as a toddler, locked her room door with no way to open it. Her mom grabbed the drill and began turning the latch into metal shavings. Later her mom glued the shavings onto a tiny canvas into the shape of a key to memorialize the day.
When my friend got locked in a small trailer bathroom with her five year-old outside in the trailer, she rammed the flimsy door until it broke around the latch.
While babysitting the grandchildren, classmate Mary sat on the floor of the children’s bedroom to play. The two-year-old grandson stood up and wandered across the room. He noticed the open door, walked over to it and proudly smiled at having done a big boy task of shutting the door.
Mary smiled until she went to open the door. It was locked from the other side. Mary looked for a thin, stiff toy to stick in knob to unlock the door. Nothing. In vain she wrenched the handle this way and that to force it open. Her grandson came over and grabbed the knob, too.
‘He was so cute as he tried to fix it. He had his tongue between his teeth he was trying so hard,” Mary laughed.
The locked door bothered her granddaughter. “Don’t worry, your mom and dad will be back soon. Let’s read books,” Mary said. The little girl agreed. She went to a little table and played librarian. Mary had to check out every book they read during the next hour and a half.
Finally they heard the front door open. “Mom! Mom! Help! We are stuck in the bedroom. We have been locked in here forever. We are starving,” the little drama queen called out.
Mom dropped everything and rushed to open the door, release them and hand out snacks. All’s well that ends well.
In the future Mary has vowed, “I will not be going back into that room.”
At our house, we ignored the loose latch on the door between the house and garage until the night Hubby grabbed a screwdriver and tightened everything. He applied oil and closed the door with a satisfied slam. Confidently he reached over to twist the handle. It did not twist.
He couldn’t get a drill. They hang on the wall inside the electronically-controlled, securely-closed, rolling garage door. Both cars with their remote controls sat inside the garage. No easy way existed to lift the heavy, electronically controlled garage door.
He went to his shop returned with a pry bar and flat wedges to do a modified credit card opening of the door.
Our sturdy, reliable door latch resisted his attempts. He did not want to cut the door. Frustrated, he looked around for another idea and spied the third, forgotten, remote control partiality covered with papers. He had purchased it a while back to replace one we thought we had lost.
Remote control in hand he pressed the button and the garage door rolled up. He walked over and reached for the stiff door knob. It would not open from that side either.
He grabbed a drill, removed the knob and began drilling the little gizmo that slides into place to hold the door shut. No door knob, no protective cover, and the door still did not budge. Loosening the finish around the frame did not give him access because of offset construction. For half an hour or more he wiggled, pried, fussed, drilled and worked on that bit of metal until it finally let go. We could hook our fingers through the knob hole and open the door. Good enough for 11 p.m. He pushed the remote to drop the garage door, and we went to bed. Replacing the knob would be a task for another day, but at least we had opened the locked and jammed door.