Breaking Into Our Own House

This is an ordinary door. It connects our kitchen to our garage. I installed the door handle and deadbolt - look at that fine workmanship.


Today, at approximately 12:11 p.m., this ordinary door became the enemy!

I had to work this morning and came home as quickly as I could so Wil and I could leave for church - we start at noon. When I arrived home, I opened the garage door, walked inside, placed my keys on the table, changed my shoes and grabbed my scriptures. We then proceeded out of this seemingly innocent door on our way to the car. There was no need to grab my keys because I knew Wil was driving. Wil locked the door knob on his way out the front door and we were on our way...until we reached the car where Wil quickly discovered his keys were not in his pocket (you guessed it, they were inside). He asked if he could use my keys to unlock the door so he could go grab his. And, under any ordinary circumstance, he could have...except my keys were inside on the table. After several minutes of laughing at ourselves, we got to work trying to break into our own house.

First we tried this...

Here's a better look - there were screws on the outside of our sliding glass door that leads from the backyard to the living room. Odd...so we thought we would unscrew them and see if we could jimmy the door loose.


Next, we tried this...yes, that's the big window into our bedroom. That didn't work.


I should mention that at this point I had to use the restroom nearly uncontrollably. I rang the doorbell at our next door neighbors - but they weren't home. The two families we know across the street were also not home. It was so bad I thought about walking to the park, which is relatively close, and using the restroom there, but I wasn't sure I would make it. Finally, I tried the neighbors across the street that we do NOT know! I was practically doing the potty dance on their front step as I listened to their dog bark and a little girl saying, "mommy, it's a girl...it's a girl mommy." Then there were muffled voices, the barking got further away and all sound ceased.

Let's take a small trip into my head at this exact moment in time. "They're not going to let me in...what if they don't answer the door...PLEASE ANSWER THE DOOR, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY AND YOU HAVE TO ANSER THE DOOR...WHAT AM I GOING TO DO IF THEY DON'T ANSWER THE DOOR!"

Finally, a man answered the door. I sheepishly (and quickly - I had to go really bad!) explained that I lived across the street and we had locked ourselves out of our house and no I didn't need to use their phone because we had our phones because we were leaving and had everything (including the camera, thanks to me taking it with me to work this morning) except the keys to our house that was currently locked and could I PLEASE use their restroom, PLEASE!!! This part of the story ends happily, as they let me use their restroom and I could go back to documenting the entire experience with our camera for this very blog!

Then, we tried the one of the small windows into our bedroom. This window is kind of tweaked so we thought it would be our best bet to get one of them to open. Nope!


Then Wil had a master stroke! The attic. We have TWO entrances to the attic - one in the garage and one in our hall. He could climb through the attic, get into our house through the hall attic and then unlock the door. He went up, he looked at the eight foot drop and decided that he would have a very difficult time unlocking the door if his body was broken.


Finally, we decided to focus our attention on the offending door!


We tried wires and pocket knives and bobby pins (I actually thought I might be able to pick the lock - it's not nearly as easy as it looks on TV!) and this little saw, ruler thing that Wil had in the garage - I'm still not sure what it was. After about twenty minutes focusing on the door - and more than an hour locked outside of our house, Wil opened the door! We happily closed the garage door and walked into our house through the now unlocked door. We are still laughing at ourselves!