I Locked Myself Out Of My House! Here Are 10 Things I Did To Get Back In

Way back before I discovered my love for locks and security, I found myself locked out of my house. When you are locked out of the house, the first thing you start to do is panic. Everyone does so to different degrees. For me, it only lasted an instant. Because I thought I knew what I could do in order to get back inside. I thought that there was no way that I was locked out of my house. So this is what I did to get back into my locked house as a complete novice. And though I may not have been successful in all of my attempts, it does serve as the steps that you can follow if you are ever locked out of the house.

How did I get locked out of my house?

It was the first couple of weeks for one of my first real jobs. I was just a kid, excited to start making some steady money. I woke up in time to get ready. No issues with the alarm. Ate breakfast. Made a lunch. My parents and sister left for their respective jobs, having to drive a much farther distance. Then, I departed some time later. Locked the door and went to my car, which I had saved up enough money for by working odd jobs. It was just an old Ford, but it got me from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. But not that day. I reach for my keys. I didn’t have them. I was locked out of my house.

I walked back to the front door. Tried the lock. Then I remember that I locked it. And in a time before cell phones, that really meant I was locked out of my house. There is a moment of panic. I knew I needed to get to work. I knew that I had been about a half an hour early every day, so I have about that long before I am primed to be late. Here’s what I did to get back in after I found out I was locked out of the house.

1. I tried the other doors

I was locked out of my house for sure. Or at least the front door was not going to budge, so I decided to see if my ineptitude had worked in my favor some other way. I walk to the back gate. That is locked. So being a young man, I make short work of the thing and climbed into the backyard. How often I used to climb in through that gate still gives my nightmares about the state of that house’s gate security.

I go to the back door. It was also locked too. There was one last door to check before I would have to admit that I was locked out of the house. Two sliding glass doors. I tried to look through the clear surface, and gauge if it was locked. But my our sliding glass doors used an unconventional method of security. Tracks blocked with PVC pipe. And as I pulled the doors to the sides, I found that I was certainly locked out of my house.

2. I tried the windows

I looked at my wristwatch and saw that time was of the essence. So I quickly went around to all of the windows. This was the winter, so everything was shut. But I had no idea if each one was locked. Most of the windows had a mesh screen, which I removed and the began trying to lift the windows. None were opening. It seemed that I was still locked out of my house.

I would offer advice to anyone who is in a time crunch while the are locked out of the house, don’t do this in a hurry. I ended up breaking one of the screens. Surprisingly not while removing them, but when I was putting it back. The last one. I had just realized that I was very much locked out of my house still, and rushed to undo my damage and try something else.

3. I tried the dog door

In my last ditch effort, I tried to get back into the house through the dog door. I was already a pretty big kid. Tall, slim build, but broad shoulders. Still, I thought that I could do it. I remembered in the past having to crawl through when the whole family was locked out of the house. And my mother always talked about a time where she was eight months pregnant with my sister and squeezed through. I was kicking myself for not thinking of it earlier. I thought, “I should have done this as soon as I noticed that I was locked out of my house.”

It was not meant to be. No matter how I moved, my shoulders would not get past the entryway. It was like moving a mattress into a play house. It just was going to fit. Also, the entire process made the dog very nervous. So I pulled myself out and figured that if I took off now on my bike, I would deal with being locked out of my house when my shift ended. So I grabbed my bike from the side of the house, and road past the car I had paid for, as I went to go earn the money to replace the window screen I broke. And at the end of it all, I was still locked out of the house.

4. I called for my spare key

When I was at work, I called to see if anyone could swing by the house and let me in when I got off. (This was the first time that I had access to a phone, as cell phones were not around just yet). I didn’t have my keys, but I knew that either my parents or my sister would have theirs. Working part time, I was going to be getting off before anyone else. No one could make it back on their lunch breaks. So I would have to be locked out of my house for a few hours.

5. I looked for a key

My boss let me off a little early and gave me a coat hanger. I told him that my family had told me about a spare key we had hidden, but he insisted that I take it with me. So I headed home on the bike with a wire hanger between my fingers and my handlebars. Searched for the key that I was told about. No luck. I was stilled locked out of my house.

The issue with the spare key, as it would turn out, was that it was moved. Just placed somewhere different on a lark. But no one remembered where it moved to, only the place that it had been. Remember that your spare key is only any good if you know where it is. Other than that, it is just a liability. A burglar may be able to find it, but you will just be locked out of the house.

6. I used a coat hanger

I tried the coat hanger everywhere I could. The front door did not have a large enough gap for me to slip through, and the back door did, but I could not tell what was going on back there. It was not long enough to thicken up and still be able to reach the PVC in the tracks of the sliding doors. And I did not dare try to take the screens off the windows again. So there I was after all of that time, still locked out of my house. And because I had been let off early, it was going to be a while before anyone showed up. The cold was bad enough, but then it started to rain. And there was no place to take shelter. I was locked out of the house and probably going to get pneumonia.

7. I got a ladder

I saw that the ladder was left out, so in a moment of sheer brilliance, I tried to use it to get in through the second story windows. There were no screens over the glass. This may be something that you could try. But using a ladder on the grass while it is raining, is not something I would recommend. I did not have the stability to give enough pressure to open the windows. I am not sure that they were even locked. I think they may have been a little sticky. But with the ladder rocking so much, there was no way to give it an honest shot. Maybe if there was someone there to hold the ladder, it would not have been locked out of my house. But there was no one. And I was locked out of the house still.

8. I called a locksmith

The only one home in the whole neighborhood at that time of day was an old woman down the street. She let me use her phone book and phone while I stood on her porch. She didn’t even want me coming inside with how wet I was. The locksmith showed up while I waited on a neighbor’s porch. Not the porch of the old woman that let me use her phone. She told me I was “getting it wet”. (It being the porch). So I was locked out of my house and stranded under the closest shelter I could find to my front door.

The locksmith took out his tools. And in the rain opened my lock within a few seconds. I am pretty sure that it took somewhere around thirty seconds. It was certainly less than a minute. Which is still very impressive, but it doesn’t sound as good as a more hyperbolic declaration. And the lock was by no means tricky. If I had to guess, I would think that he just raked it a few times. And I went from being locked out of my house, to standing in front of an open door.

9. I tried a bump key

I went inside the instant I wasn’t locked out of my house, got the money to pay the man, and made sure to put my keys in my pocket. I was kind of interested about the picks and how he did that. The rain let up a bit, so he stuck around and talked to me a bit. Then the locksmith asked me if I wanted to try to open the door. He handed me a bump key and a hammer. He asked if I had the keys. Then the shut and locked the door, simulating being locked out of the house again.

I put the bump key in the lock, one notch removed. Hit it with the hammer, and tried to turn the knob, all in a single action. It was frustrating having to pull it out one notch after each strike. An issue I have since then learned to work around. But after a few whacks, I gave up. As a total novice, a bump key would not have helped me if I was really still locked out of my house.

10. I tried lock picks

Next, the locksmith handed me the lock picks and gave me some pointers. He only told me how to rake the lock. It would be a while before I would learn the differences between raking and single pin picking. Longer still before I would take up lock picking as a hobby. I did, however, open the lock after some time. A few instances of letting the pins reset, but the process just clicked for me. Then the door clicked open, and I was not locked out of my house, even hypothetically.

I would like to say that trying to pick the lock was some sort of epiphany moment for me. That it was the moment the clouds parted, the rain stopped, and I knew then what I was born to do. Honestly, I liked it, but it had started to rain again and my main priority became getting into some dry clothes. It would be a while before I was re-introduced to lock picking. Even longer still before I would get my first lock pick set and a real introduction to locksmithing. But without on-site instruction for a professional locksmith, trying to pick the lock would not have helped me get back in after I was locked out of my house.

Conclusion

Like anyone, when I was locked out of my house I did everything I could to get back in. As it happens, calling a locksmith was the best option for me. But when you are locked out of the house, any of these methods may work for you. This is just what I did when I was locked out of my house. Each time a person is locked out of the house the circumstances can be different. Still, you should never shy away from asking for the help you need.

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