Vacation Home Locked Closet Hinge Solution

Like many in our vacation home community we decided even before purchasing the vacation home that we would be renting it out when we weren't there.  We figured it would be better than leaving the house empty and this way we end up with the vacation home paying for itself as well as generating a little income.  Based on the figures renting the house on a short term basis for a total of 5 months all expenses are paid for the year and everything else is extra money.  So this will end up being a nice bit of rental income as well as giving us a free place to stay on vacation.

Most home owners in our vacation home community do the same thing.  Since we have no desire to cart some of our personal effects back and forth we are doing like many by setting up a locking closet.  This really is not a difficult undertaking.  Essentially all that is required is to remove the existing handset and replace it with a locking handset.  This part went smoothly but then I noticed a potential problem.

The closet we are using is in the second bedroom.  The doors are set so they swing into the room rather than into the closet.  As a result the hinge pins are on the room side of the door which means even if the door is locked someone could pop the hinge pins out to get into the closet.  While this is highly unlikely it made me a bit uncomfortable since we will be storing computer equipment, home canned foods, tools and other items not intended for use by the tenants.  I did a Google search to come up with an easy, low cost, DIY solution to this minor problem.

The solution I found was drilling a hole through the hinge then screwing in a screw through into the pin.  This would prevent removing the pin entirely unless the screw is removed but this can only be achieved on the closet side of the door.  If we securing a hinge pin at home this would be a great solution as we already have a drill to make the pilot screw hole.  However, at the vacation home that would mean buying a drill.  So we asked the helpful folks at Home Depot.

They came up with an even easier solution.  Pictured is the solution and it is a bit difficult to tell what we did from the photo.  The two centre screws of the hinge were removed.  Since the screw holes did not line up we improvised.  We put a nail adjacent to the screw hole that would line up with the empty screw hole leaving the nail out by about ¼ - inch.  What happens is when the door is closed the nail head goes into the empty screw hole so even if the pin is pulled out the door cannot be removed.  I thought this was a great solution!  We used two nails on each hinge but that is because of the design of the hinge.  One nail would be sufficient on a normal straight design hinge.

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