Yesterday, our neighbor’s home was broken into. It’s a sickening feeling to have your home violated like that and I could tell they were pretty shaken up about it even though nothing of importance or great value was taken.

The really alarming thing was how easy it was for the intruder to just kick the front door in! I think Kevin Ogle did a special on the evening news a while back about it, but I couldn’t find it after searching the KFOR website for a while.

The gist of the report was that a lot of builders are using inadequate materials for the safety of your home, specifically, inadequate screws for the deadbolt plate. You really might want to check this out on your home. My neighbor’s door kicked in really easily, splintering the door casing because the screws didn’t reach the stud in the wall.

So, I immediately went to our hardware store and bought some nice beefy screws to replace ours. (If you decide to do this yourself, you’ll probably want to get the #8 screw in whatever length you like.) I just had to take a picture of the ridiculous difference between the existing screws and the screws that SHOULD be fastening your deadbolt receiver plate if you want any security.

Here’s a picture I took with my little point-and-shoot…

This isn’t a joke, those really are the tiny little screws that our builder had holding our deadbolt receiver plate in place! They were just under 1 inch long. Compared to the new 3-inch replacement screws, they’re a joke.

Anyway, that was my project last night and thought I’d pass it along in case any of you might benefit from it.

Be safe…