The front door saga

Landlord B showed us around the place for a second time on Saturday morning, and upon trying to enter, one problem was glaringly obvious.

See that place where the key goes? Yeah, me neither. Purple smiley faces notwithstanding, it's no laughing matter: what's the point of having a hip and swanky joint if you can't even get inside?

After obtaining the keys and grabbing my toolset from the other apartment, I got to work. It's just a doorknob, right? Unscrew it, remove the old lock, swap in the parts from the lock replacement kit B kindly provided, screw it all back together, and that's one more dumb doorknob down, right?

THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE IN CAPS BECAUSE LOL NOT LISTENING

Oh, okay, hum. That's a lot more gizmo than I'd expected. I'll just start unscrewing things and see what turns up. Good plan.

Half an hour later, I'd loosened all the screws, turned all the knobs, twisted all the component parts, pried at bits of wood, and finally ended up with this:

Piece of cake! Well, one of those cakes that lies about the preparation time, I guess. You know the type.

Anyway, now I just needed do everything in reverse with the new lock and we're good to go. What could possibly go wrong? Just slide in the new lock body and—

There's a light, but we're in the wrong tunnel.

Okay, so apparently the new lock is smaller by half an inch on all sides than the old lock, which means I'll have to replace the old one, which doesn't work even with a new cylinder installed. Time to open it up.

That silver thing in the bottom right corner was very naughty. See next picture.

I upended the entire lock about five seconds later, scattering its components across the floor. Panic ensued. I did eventually put the thing back together, and discovered one piece that did not belong.

This doohicky caused much grief.

I'm guessing this whatchamacallit jammed the lock for the previous tenants, causing them to rip its heart out in a violent rage. Okay,  doohicky removed, problem solved. Let's put it all back together, put the lock and knobs back on the door, and test it out!

Beautiful. Now for the key...why won't the deadbolt turn? Why is the key stuck?!

I took the faceplates off again, opened up the lock again, accidentally spilled everything on the floor for the third or fourth time, and discovered this thingy:

Home Repairs 101: if it ain't broke, don't flip around everything that looks vaguely reversible!

I flipped it and put everything back together once again. (I was nearly as good at putting-back-together as I was at apart-taking by this point). Close the door, turn the deadbolt, and...no go. Around this point, J made a brilliant observation: if the deadbolt doesn't engage, there's a problem with either the deadbolt or the wall.

Mystery solved! Deadbolts are notoriously bad at boring a hole through solid wood. This does mean that the deadbolt never would have worked for the previous tenants; I wonder why they never complained?

No complaints from me. I'm a man of action.

A few minutes later, it was time for another test run. Video below; keep your fingers crossed.