SBH wrote:
I just had a conversation with my neighbor, who owns her house and
takes in roommates. This is her first house and everything is new for
her. I told her if she ever needed any help with anything she's more
than welcome to ask, which she has taken advantage of on occasion.
Anyway, she's a good church going young girl who gets her roommates
from people of her church (females only). Even though I would think
they are fairly trustworthy souls, she's somewhat apprehensive about
the keys to the doors. Her two roommates just notified her about
leaving (second set of roommates) and she asked me about the Kwikset
system which allows the owner to change keys. I told her there are
conflicting reviews and many not so favorable. Therefore, I started
wondering if there are other alternatives for people like her or
landlords who may have issues with frequent tenants/roommates without
having to purchase another set of locks or have a locksmith re-key
the current ones.

Anyone experience this similar problem?


For about $35 (on Ebay) you can get a box containing all the stuff you need
to re-key a lock. I'm talking a few parts and about a million goddamn pins!

Re-keying an ordinary lock takes about 15 minutes once you get it out of the
door - it's an interesting hobby.

The above implies you've got a new key and want to make the lock fit it. But
where to get the new keys? You COULD go to Home Depot and tell the worker to
make a couple of keys with random depths (This will cause his brain to
explode. You may have to go through several store associates.). Once you
have your new key in hand, you can adjust the lock to fit.

I'll wager you could get a bag full of already cut keys from a locksmith who
has collected them from customers who wanted a lock changed!

Here's another option: By suitable arrangement of the pins, you can have two
completely different keys activate the same lock! One use is a "master" key
that opens several different doors.

I did this some years ago when I bought a duplex and turned it in to a
single-family residence. Counting the burglar bars on the front and back
doors, and the locks for the doors themselves, it came out to TWELVE locks
that needed to be re-keyed! The job took about three hours.