Our main bedroom’s en-suite bathroom is really, really small. It’s a narrow little rectangle that fits in a shower on the one side, a toilet on the other, and a little basin squished in between the two. This has the effect that if I’m forced to make use of this bathroom, I prefer to lock the bedroom door and leave the bathroom doors open – so that I don’t have to feel trapped in a little claustrophobic space.

Yesterday was work from home day, and with Chantelle out and about and Olga happily cleaning around the house, my bathroom break time forced me into using the bedroom en-suite bathroom for privacy’s sake. Having happily completed my business and about to exit the bedroom, I turned the key in the lock and was surprised by the fact that turning the key presented no give at all. More annoying than surprising was the then subsequent lifting up of the key to examine the key shaft, with the key head still firmly lodged in the lock itself.

Bugger.

country mews bedroom broken key

The broken key. It really is quite ridiculous just how easy this rubbish key snapped. (Seems to be made out of some sort of pewter perhaps?)

After Chantelle finished chuckling at me via the phone, I managed to convince Olga to come to the bedroom door where I instructed her to extract my toolbox from the office and bring it around the house to the bedroom window, where she was forced to then hand me tools through the burglar bars (the toolbox doesn’t fit through the bars in case you’re wondering).

Tools in hand, I then took off the handle and casing and proceeded to extract the key head using nothing other than two small jewel screwdrivers. Feeling very proud of myself, I screwed the handle back on, grabbed the spare key (which is kept on the same bunch as the main bedroom key) and let myself out.

Right, so straight to the Q20 then to ensure this doesn’t happen again thanks to a stiff lock, but more important than that, I don’t think I’m going to be locking that door any more anyway. So hopefully people knock.

Though to be fair, they’ll probably learn pretty quickly should the first couple of days not go so well!

The lock in question - now due for a violent meeting with a can of Q20 lubricant!

The lock in question – now due for a violent meeting with a can of Q20 lubricant!