For years now we've had keyless locks on the doors on our home, but the one on the back stopped working with the app, and we never installed one on the garage.

The garage didn't have one because it didn't have a deadbolt, and the garage shifted in the wind, making it so the door wasn't always aligned enough for the latches to connect. I "fixed" the alignment problem by putting an oversized striker plate (intended for an industrial 3-inch latch) which allowed the garage to drift and still catch the latch when the door was pulled snug. Plus, until recently, we weren't aware that anyone uninvited had entered our garage, so it wasn't always locked for lazy reasons.

The one on the back door stopped turning on its keypad lights some time ago. The online instructions suggested a factory resent would do the trick, so I did that. It didn't correct the keypad lights, and curiously didn't remove any of the codes we'd previously added to the lock, but it did remove the other configuration items so it stopped talking (through its bridge) to the lock control app.

With the new garage construction, they installed a deadbolt and a locking door knob on the garage. We got two keys, and had considered doing the thing we did before with a lockbox on the garage, or just walking around the garage and using the keypad to open the door, but that seemed all not as nice as just going into the convenient door, or could be even better better by having the app controls. It's really handy when you know you're going to be carrying an armload of stuff from the car and you can open the lock to the house with the app before you even get out; seems it'd be just as handy to do that to the garage. Plus if someone forgets to lock the door, it can be done without having to go out to the garage.

We decided to replace the lock on the back door and add a matching set of lock and knob to the back door.

On Sunday, I swapped out the back door lock pretty quickly and got it all set up. The style of the keypad changed a little, and the bit inside got a lot smaller. There are a few scratches from the old, bigger lock plates, but they're barely noticeable. The lock works great. I re-added the codes, and also noticed that the locks offered to connect to my Ring app, so I can see their state and control them from the app where I see the doorbells and other cameras. Neat. It also integrated seamlessly with Alexa and Google, which we have both of, so with one more setting I can allow telling one of the devices to do it instead of pulling out a phone to tap it on the app. Not sure I'm ready for that, yet, though.

Today I did the swap on the garage, replacing what the installers had put on. We decided to do the same as we have on the house--have a simple latching doorknob, and depend on just the deadbolt for locking the door.

I quickly removed the doorknob. I crossed my fingers that I could just use the latch in place, but the pin through the latch from the knob is different, so I had to replace that. In a bit of a face-palm of wasted energy, I pulled out the Dremel and gouged out a spot for the rectangular plate on the latch. After I got it installed, I found that they also included the same kind of round end that was installed originally. I could have just popped that off and shoved it in without carving anything. No worries. Of course, the hole I gouged is just ever so much bigger than the plate, which is why I would have rather done the other. Lesson learned and inspection set me up to be able to do that with the deadbolt! I changed out the striker, which fit a touch better than the one installed before it, and the knob is a go!

I pulled out the deadbolt quickly enough. I expected, and could eyeball, that the latch wouldn't work between the deadbolts; where the things screw in and poke through are just different enough to need to be replaced. Learning my lesson, I popped off the faceplate from the latch, snapped on the little round one, and pushed that into place. Having just installed the same kind of deadbolt to the back door, this installation went even quicker. I cringed a moment when the WiFi failed to connect on the first try, despite having a strong signal when picking it in the app; I considered that the WiFi on my phone might be a little stronger than on the lock. Once the garage is complete, I'll return my WiFi extender to the garage, but it doesn't have power yet, so it's got to catch the good graces of WiFi luck for now. It did work fine on the second try, so that was groovy. Everything worked on the first try. When I went to replace the striker plate, just so the same finish would be there, I found that the plate that came with the new lock was just a bit bigger than the one that came with the door, and since it's a metal frame, I didn't want to deal with my Dremel (or my skills), and left the silver one in.

Having not installed the first locks, I didn't know that these didn't come with any kind of gasket on the lock or in the package. The metal of the lock just snugs to the metal of the door (all the doors are "steel" solid core doors), so hopefully there's enough finish on everything to avoid corrosion and that the locks are snug enough in the holes to not deal with leakage. I might put a pin in this and add a bead of sealant behind the exterior parts in the spring, when the weather stays above zero for a few days in a row again.

Now the garage looks a lot more like the house. The siding is the same, the lighting (at least on the parts that face each other) are the same. The windows and doors are trimmed in white. The garage door is white and solid, while the house door is brown and wood-looking, but there is a white screen door on the house, so almost a match.

Now we're just waiting for the electric company to connect the garage, and for the final construction inspection, which is scheduled for tomorrow!