Go out one door...

and come in another. Or so you could, because there is not one, or two but 4 doors onto our back deck. Add this to two front doors, three lower level doors to the outdoor patio and three doors in/out of the garage. The result is a whole lot of doors with a whole lot of locks.

The harrowing total is 12 doors and 17 different locks. Harrowing because one of the renovations we did before moving in was to have each lock re-keyed, several repaired and a few replaced. And 17 locks adds up. In fact the total cost to get all of these locks working and re-keyed was $330. We were prepared for several unexpected expenses like this to crop up and had a contingency set aside so it wasn't a big deal and it was very worth it to have securely locking doors with fresh keys. Plus it was kind of fun to walk through each door with the locksmith and learn a little bit about the different locks, door knobs and keys we had. And fun fact: we ended this project with three different keys into our house! So imagine Chris and I at any given time or place outside our house trying to figure out which key goes to what door. 

Almost all of the locks and door knobs were original and over half were broken. The locksmith was able to rescue 8 original knobs and locks but we had to replace the remaining 4. Luckily, the 6 really cool vintage ones, the two front door knobs and these four on the back porch,

he was able to take apart fix and reassemble.One lock even had a broken off rusty key inside! 

I file this post under "crazy things you don't even think of when you buy and old house". Because while a lot of things were going through my mind when we made our offer, old tile, mildew stains, roof leak and rose carpet, rusted out broken keys inside of non-functioning locks was not one of them. And I definitely hadn't counted how many doors there were!