A Townhome Door That Won’t Open in Bethesda, Maryland

Everyone who has ever sold a house has a story about something that went wrong just as the moving trucks were pulling up.  There’s the hot water heater that chose that day to burst or the garage door spring that broke overnight, or the power failure that shut down all the banks or the snowstorm that kept the movers away…the list is probably endless.  But I think I discovered a new one and the (easy) solution is worth sharing.

As many of you know, I sold my own residence this summer (real estate agents should be forced to buy, sell and move every few years just to remind them of how stressful and tiring it can be!!).  We were fortunate enough to work with lovely buyers and a very professional and delightful buyers’ agent.  The day of settlement, the buyers asked their agent to do the final walk thru for them and we had arranged to leave a key under the front mat of our (soon-to-be-former) Bethesda townhome so that the agent could get in.  About 10 minutes after her scheduled arrival time, she called to say that perhaps we left the wrong key and it wasn’t fitting into the lock.  Luckily, we have a keypad on the garage door and she asked for that combo so that she could access the house that way…and all went well.

At settlement we turned over three front door keys and a couple of back door keys (the one from the townhouse to the garage – that we never locked in our 10 years of downtown Bethesda living!) and wished our buyers well.  The next day, the new owner tried to access the front door … only to run into the same problem that her agent had encountered the day before.  She, too, deferred to the garage entry and we got a call suggesting that we had turned over the wrong keys.  Even though, as a real estate agent, I do tend to have keys to other peoples’ homes, I was sure that I had taken the keys off of our key rings and turned them over.   I was convinced we were dealing with people who were clearly “key challenged” and was able to locate another front door key so that I could test their inability.

Since the new owners have not yet moved into Bethesda I just made arrangements to go over with son/partner, Kevin, and the key to the front door…convinced that it would immediately open…Wrong!  I couldn’t even force the key into the lock and it acted like it didn’t belong there…but I knew I was holding a key to that door.  I wondered if the movers had done something (but remembered that they used the garage exit) and then contemplated vandalism (but couldn’t figure that one out either).  So, I took my key and went to Strosnider’s Hardware for help.  When I explained the dilemma, I was handed a $5 spray can of Silicon and told to spray it into the lock….and, voila!!, problem solved.

Being the good citizen that I am (!), I also sprayed into the locks of a couple of former neighbors.  The helpful salesman at Strosnider’s  told me that you should do this a couple of times a year.  He laughed when I suggested that it hadn’t been done in 10 years!

So, I can’t help with the snowstorm, or the power failure, or the burst hot water heater or the broken garage door….but if you run into keys that all of a sudden don’t fit, get a can of silicon spray and your problems will be solved!

- Contributing Blogger: Gretchen Koitz

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