Old Locks

Before

Life has been a little wild around here this summer.   Eric is building.   I'm weaving.   The youngest has discovered programming.  The oldest is starting college.   We've been canning and gardening and then canning some more.    I've been planning and making decisions and buying a lot of building supplies.

We've had a bit of fun tracking down old doors and things.  I scored some nice old doors that we don't have to strip at all and some that we do.  I found some nice old glass knobs at a salvage place and I've learned a bunch of stuff about old door hardware.   I've also gotten lots of practice stripping 100 years of old paint, varnish and shellac off of old doors.

Cleaned up and ready to re-install

I disassembled my first antique lock, then promptly broke a piece while cleaning the bug nests out of it, then jiggered a replacement piece out of an old picture hanger and made it work again.  I've used these pics in case anyone else wants to know what the insides are supposed to look like. 

I cleaned it all up and oiled it and now it's as good as new.   All it needs is a skeleton key. We'll use it on one of the new old doors in the addition.

It was nice to have a new puzzle to work on and I must say that working on it made me think of my dad a lot.   There's something about the smell of wd-40.  He'd have gotten a kick out of the whole process.