Our plan was to get out of the house and go to the grocery store while it was still light out (you gotta have goals). The night before we got all this ice so we went out to defrost our cars. Rob had some De-Icer in his car, but used it up. He suggested I run upstairs to our apartment to get another can he had in the coat closet. No problem.
At first, I can't get my key in the door. It seems like the most bizarre thing. So, I go back down and get Rob's key ... maybe mine had bent or something. I finally get it to go in, but then I can't turn it! So, I call down to Rob to come up. He can't turn it either. I'm like, well, my phone is almost dead, can we use yours to call the landlords? Rob left his phone in the apartment!
So, we don't really want to call because that's like the last resort because I thought my phone was going to turn off any second. So, we try to use pliers to get more leverage to turn it -- which was working until it broke off in the lock.
Finally we decide to call our landlords. They were pretty unhelpful during the entire ordeal and were most concerned with our "destruction of property" of breaking the key off than anything else. She offers to give me the number of a locksmith. She was not going to call for us! The guy that owns the lock place that's 2 doors down from our house doesn't live in West Bend so he wasn't going to get there for another hour and said he could cost us $200. He flat out said, I really don't want to do it. So, I ended up calling around to other places (note: unhelpfulness of landlords). (Luckily our neighbor across the hall has phone books in these cabinets out in the hallway so we were able to use this. Because the landlord gave me the one number of the one locksmith "she knew of in town." Like didn't even offer to look up others). One of the guys I talked to said he could do it and didn't think it'd be $200, but suggested trying to spray some WD40 to loosen it up. So, we went to Walmart and got a phone charger and WD40. We get back home, spray it in the lock, and are able to get the broken-off key out and somehow the door then opened. It was probably about 2 hours that we couldn't get in.
Obviously it wasn't good that we broke the key, but
honestly if we hadn't tried to get in, their solution was going to be to
drive here and put their key in the lock -- which wouldn't have turned
it because something was obviously wrong with the lock -- we tried both
of our keys so why theirs would magically work is a crock. So in
speculation hindsight, it would have probably taken just as long, if not
longer, if we hadn't basically figured it out ourselves.
Man, after this, we are both definitely done with West Bend.
