The door at this Huntley, Illinois home had a lock but no deadbolt, so nothing on it resisted the door being pushed open. We bored the door and the frame to accept one, fitted the deadbolt and keyed it to the existing lock so both work from a single key.
A deadbolt is the part of a door that resists being forced. A handle set holds the door shut, but its latch is spring-loaded, because that is what lets the door close behind you without turning anything - and the same spring is why it does not hold against force. A door can therefore have a working lock on it and still not be secure.
This door had no deadbolt at all. Fitting one where there has never been one means cutting new openings in both the door and the frame, in the right places, so that the bolt actually enters the strike. That is the part that has to be done properly.
What the door was missing
The door was being secured by its handle set alone. That is a single spring latch, and there was nothing else on the door to hold it closed against a push.
This is a common state of affairs on a house. The lock on a handle set is a real lock and it does keep the door shut, which is why it reads as secure. What it does not do is resist the door being opened by force, and that is the gap a deadbolt fills.
Boring the door and the frame
Fitting a deadbolt where there has never been one means cutting several new openings: a bore through the face of the door for the lock body, a hole through the edge of the door for the bolt to travel through, and a mortise in the frame for the strike the bolt locks into. They all have to line up, because a bolt that misses the strike does not lock anything.
We cut these with drilling templates rather than by eye. A template fixes the position and the angle of each cut, which is what keeps the bore square to the door face and the finished bolt aligned with the strike.
The frame side matters as much as the door. The strike is set into the frame to receive the bolt, and its depth decides whether the bolt sits fully home or stands proud of the opening.
- A bore cut through the door face for the deadbolt body.
- A hole cut through the door edge for the bolt.
- A strike mortised into the frame to receive the bolt.
- The deadbolt fitted and adjusted so the bolt enters the strike cleanly.
Keyed alike on one key
The new deadbolt and the existing lock are keyed alike, so one key works both. That is a deliberate choice rather than a default: two locks on one door with two different keys is how a door ends up being left with only one of them locked.
We key the two locks to the same key, which we are licensed by the State of Illinois to do - Illinois licence 191.000502.
What the finished door does
The door is now held closed by two separate mechanisms instead of one. The deadbolt is the part that resists being pushed open, and it now travels into a strike set into the frame rather than relying on the spring latch alone.
Nothing about the door changed beyond the hardware. The work is in the door and its frame, so the repaired opening looks like the door it was when it was hung.
Where the work was done
The job was at a private residence in Huntley, Illinois, in McHenry County. We do not publish the address of a customer home.
Huntley is inside the Illinois part of our service area. Our coverage runs across Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin, but the licence this business holds is issued by Illinois, so licence and code statements apply to the Illinois side of the state line rather than being extended across it.