A few days ago our door latch on the screen door stopped working, I assumed the “spring” broke so we ordered a new door latch.
While ordering a new one, we discovered there are “left handed” and “right handed” door latches. The latch is on the right side of the door, but the handle is left of the latch so we ordered a left handed latch.
We received the new latch today and thinking I could put this on in 1 minute or less, I braved the cold winds coming from the Southeast and went outside to install this… and spent about 35 minutes messing with this piece of plastic. I even cut a finger for extra bonus!
Of course the screw holes where just far enough away from the original holes that I had to mess with that, and when I finally got it on and tested it, it worked locking into the main door, but when we tried to have the screen door by itself, it would not lock into the latch at all, so it was just flopping in the wind.
Grrrrrrr…….
I moved the latch around, tried this, tried that, nothing would work and the damn wind so was NOT helping so I said screw it, let’s deal with this later.
I came back inside with the new latch and the old latch when I came up with the idea of just swapping out the “spring” of the new one into the old one. Once I did that, I put it back on the door and boom. Done.
And then I saw what the issue was…
We should have ordered the “right handed” latch.
There is even a large “R” on the old latch, but of course, not in a spot anyone would notice it.
*sigh.
$15 for a “spring” and I also have a few spare parts of plastic.
Yeah… plastic on a metal box… What could go wrong?
And as a side note, it has been too damn warm the last few weeks to have this freaking cold wind hitting us from the Southeast. Yesterday the wind was from the Northwest and twice as strong but much warmer.
Brrr. I am so over this cold wind crap.
