Locked up tight

I managed to get the new door latch installed yesterday afternoon.  It took me 3 hours to complete.  I still need to paint but I did get it installed and working; even the key lock which is just short of a miracle.

Here is what I started with:

outside

inside

There used to be a latch on the inside but it fell off.  Why is there such a large mechanism for the inside lock?

No idea.

Does it do anything special that any other lock wouldn't do?

Nope.  In fact, it didn't even lock anymore.

Removing the old latch was pretty easy.

outside

inside

Notice how far away the hole is from the door edge.  Is there a good reason for this?  Nope.  It does mean that there are no known latches or knobs made in the world today that will fit this stupid design.

I went to Lowes on Sunday and picked up a couple of push plates which are just thin pieces of metal.  I intended to drill new holes in these plates and new holes in the door.  The plates would serve to cover up the old holes.

That was the idea anyway and it seemed simple enough.  Just to be safe I picked up a couple of drill bits that claimed to be able to drill through metal.

After much frustration and many failed attempts, I ended up with this:

Those drill bits I purchased sure didn't seem to be very good at drilling holes in metal.  I used a large nail and hammered a hole/dent in the metal where the holes should be and still it was very difficult to keep the stupid drill from running all over the face of the metal.  What I ended up with sure isn't perfect but it is by far the best I will ever do with this as I was quickly losing patience.  I was starting to contemplate a hook latch at this point. 

I'm sure I only needed a single plate but it was a good thing I bought two because there were numerous screwups that were hacksawed off.

Another challenge was drilling the holes in the door itself.  The outside hole was to be larger due to the lock mechanism and "countersinked."  To be honest, I don't really know what that means.  After studying all the pieces, I took it to mean that the larger hole wasn't intended to go all the way through the door.  How deep should it be?  I guessed half way and kept drilling deeper until the thing seemed to fit ok.

Eventually, I got it all together.

outside

inside

I went to the trouble of making sure the key locked worked.  Inserting and turning the key sure enough made the push latch lock.  I closed the door, pulled, and it came right back open.  You guessed it.  The stupid inside latch didn't reach the metal latch on the outside of the door.  Not only would it not lock, it would not even latch and stay closed. 

I had anticipated this mishap already since it was near impossible to get the latch as close to the edge of the door as the original so I wasn't surprised.  This stuff is par for the course with me.

I studied it a bit and came up with this:

Now we're cooking with gas!

It was starting to get dark so I had to stop.  Later this week I will take everything apart and paint over all the exposed wood and metal except for the grey latches themselves.  It should look pretty good.  I locked her up for the evening and called it a night.

locked up tight!