This is a petty little example of one of those 15bazillion little things from the last week: Last Monday, dad & mom’s front door knob decided to give out/seize up. It was in the last hours my brother and his family were here. Totally weird. Worked all day just fine. Then it would not open. We pried with screwdrivers but it wasn’t going to budge. Fine. Being a DIY family, we took the door off the hinges to remove the core of the doorknob so we could at least still use the door. We are just using the dead bolt to latch the door. Not a big deal.

I had almost a week to pickup a new doorknob before some family came to stay at dad & mom’s for a couple weeks. Of course, I didn’t do it earlier in the week (fought and won with a computer instead, more on this later) – so, family is coming in 4 hours and I’m at Lowe’s to buy a doorknob. After seeing there are 100+ doorknobs to choose from I had this overwhelmed feeling of “this is personal! it’s the front door, the first thing people see – mom should be choosing the look of her new doorknob, not me.” So, I call her to ask – her response, “why would I care – it’s just a doorknob”…okay, I’m weird. {I happen to really dislike the doorknob that is my front door – I care. Guess it’s just me}

After checking out all the options, explanations, and multiple discussions with the sales person, I got even more overwhelmed with the choices – this is important {even if it is just me who thinks so!} and I’d plan to run into Lowe’s, grab it, and get out. (we had already been in town 6 hours-it was time to go home!) It’s now been 20+ minutes, I’m tired and I have to finish getting things cleaned up before family gets there. I decide on one that looks almost identical to the one that broke. (that way it is a non-decision and can’t be bad, right?) Apparently, the one that broke was commercial grade and shouldn’t have broken. Whatever. The sales person didn’t believe we really wanted a commercial grade and not a more personal look. I’m done. I want the same thing as we had before. I saw it didn’t have a lock on the inside and I thought “Oh, good. It won’t get accidentally locked”. (The other one would bump the wall and lock us out at random times.)

I get home, get other more important cleaning things done and start in on changing out the doorknob. Matt (my youngest bro) happened to be there and watch me start – he was impressed I pulled the handle portion off as quick as I did and said he could tell I’d get it done faster {I did tell him Zach had shown me what to do} so he went on his way. I did get it done and without too much effort.

However…. It was an autolock doorknob! Meant for storage closets to be only ever opened with a key!!!!!! Aargghhhh!!!! Seriously! So, no – it was going to lock us out randomly – but EVERY TIME THE DOOR SHUT! I was so frustrated. If it wasn’t for the four people watching me I totally would have screamed and burst into tears. Instead, I took it back out put it all away and re-installed the broken doorknob, with no core. This whole stupid doorknob has now consumed almost 3 hours of my last week. Three hours I didn’t have. And I still have to take it back, find the right one, come home and go through the install process again. {sigh}