Bathroom Door Fiasco

The other night while I was out walking Deuce, I got a message from Susan telling me that our upstairs bathroom door was accidentally locked with no occupant inside. Normally one would be able to unlock a bathroom door with a nail or a bobby pin, but the fools who lived in our unit before us had changed all the door knobs. The doorknob in question has a key lock and we don’t have the key. This was a problem.

We checked the window from the roof outside but it was locked so, not wanting to damage the door, I went onto the internet to find some information on picking locks. I found what I needed and spent some time making some homemade tools (you can find virtually anything on the web if you know where to look -- scary). I spent close to an hour trying to pick the lock but the tools I made were not strong enough to do the job. Time to explore other options.

I removed the moulding from the door frame with a pry bar and then tried sliding a kitchen knife between to release the latch. This didn’t work because there is a small cylinder at the back of the door latch which locks it when the door is closed. Frustration was setting in and I was not worrying so much about damage anymore.

I slid the pry bar between the door and the frame to see if I could open it that way without breaking anything, or not. It worked! I managed to apply enough pressure for the latch to clear the door jamb with minimal damage. My next job is to buy a new doorknob for the bathroom and install it before this happens again.