Locks and keys

This week I went out to the house to meet some contractors regarding landscaping, deck, and water systems.  The creepy thing is that the front door to the house was open.  Not just unlocked, but ajar.  And there was a copy of our front door key on the front porch shelf.  I happened to be on the phone with a friend and she listened as I walked around the house to make sure nobody was there.  I didn't see anything that looked out of place or missing.  Like Goldilocks, I checked the beds to see if someone had slept there, but I don't think so.  Very weird.  Also, almost all of the windows were unlocked which could be new or not.  Maybe an old friend or housekeeper of the previous owner was returning their key and went in to check out changes we were making.  Who knows.

Needless to say, we are changing the locks.  At this point I am not worried about things being stolen because I doubt someone wants to haul away the various furniture items I have purchased using Craigslist.  But I really don't like the feeling of walking into a house where a stranger might be lurking. 

Anyway, so now the question: purchase all new locks or rekey existing locks.  Right now there are actually three keys to different deadbolts and no keys for the keyed handsets.  I don't know if a locksmith could get all the locks on the same key since they are probably all different brands.  So I went to Home Depot down the road and talked to the lock guy.  Apparently both Schlage and Kwikset have new locks out that you can rekey yourself.  Since we might someday rent out this house for various events, I think that might be a good investment.  So I bought a front door set and will try it out before I purchase the others.  I'll install Friday and then post about how easy or difficult it was.

So this visit was spent mostly with contractors and going shopping.  Not much got done.  I did install a toilet roll holder and clean the soot off the front of the fireplace.  I researched how to clean a stone fireplace and looked for an industrial cleaner called TSP.  Maybe they don't sell this anymore because I couldn't find it at Home Depot, Lowes or HEB.  So I just used some laundry detergent we had out there and a hard bristle brush.  Most of the soot came off fairly easily and wasn't as tough as the website led me to believe.  I guess the moral of this story is to try the easiest and least caustic thing first.

The weird thing about the fireplace was that there were hundreds of nails among the soot that I scooped out.  I assume the previous owners were just burning scrap wood that had nails in it.  But there were so many nails for so little soot I wonder if there is another reason.  Do people purposefully put nails into their fireplace for some reason like holding the heat longer?  If anyone has any ideas, true or make-believe, I would love to hear them.

That's all for now.  Next trip is tomorrow.