It's never a good thing when the phone rings at 6 am. Woke up and found it was our helper Siti who was calling to tell me that she was stuck in Zoey's playroom. Once again the wind had blown the door shut and this time, even though she was on the right side of the door, it wouldn't open. No amount of turning the door would make the latch spring back. It was broken.
Some of you may remember that I had to buy a bolt cutter ( http://olivia.thechiongs.com/2015/06/21/why-i-bought-a-bolt-cutter-today/ ) a few weeks ago when one of the doors got locked shut and we couldn't find the key. I ended up having to cut the lock on the window grilles to get into the room. Back then, I decided that the solution would be to replace the door knob. Unfortunately, procrastination made it such that 6 weeks later, I still haven't bought a new door knob.
In accordance to the law of locksmiths (which I am sure states in fine print that you will never urgently require the service of a locksmith unless it is in the middle of the night or on the weekend), it's not only Sunday, but it is also National Day. Any locksmith I call at 6 am this morning to come and open this door is going to charge an arm and a leg. So once again I decide take matters into my own hands and open this door on my own. Google helped me to decide the best way to proceed. I knew the side with the screws was inside the room, so the first step was getting inside. Since we now have the keys to the window grilles, I could climb into the room fairly easily. The next challenge was how to take the door knob apart. Armed with a couple of screw drivers and a knife, I proceeded to open the casing, unscrew each part of the door knob and take it apart piece by piece. It took me an hour and a half, but I did it.
I know it's my own fault for not making the door knob replacement a priority and the consequence was I had to get up at 6 am to fix the problem. So much for sleeping in on National Day! It's also a reminder that the door gave us a warning 6 weeks ago when it locked on its own. Universe was sending me a message and I even though I got it, I didn't act on it.
So the moral of the story is - listen to that nagging voice in the back of your head. It's there for a reason. You go through life and gain all these experiences that are meant to help you avoid potentially time or money wasting situations. It's there to remind you of the things you can do to make life a bit easier. Don't ignore it.
This time the cost was a couple of hours of sleep. Next time, the cost may be much higher. I'm going downstairs to buy a new door knob now.