Got called out to fix a kicked-in door downtown. It was a wild night with Pres. Biden visiting town, an escaped zebra running around in the mountains and the base level anarchy that occurs in downtown Seattle on any given day. It was no surprise that a Belltown apartment building’s door got kicked in.
The strike plate and a chunk of wood were missing. I could screw it all back in but the zeitgeist dictates that somebody would only kick it in again. I decided to replace the busted out wood with a ninety degree piece of weldable steel (angle iron) and screw it in from the side and the back.
I hope that this will give future would-be door kickers a little more sport. For anybody trying to replicate, 3/4″ angle iron with 3″ screws countersunk from the side and 2″ screws from the back. This will distribute the force of a kick across a much wider area than the small t-strike that was there before.
You have to remove the wood where the steel will go first, then countersink for the screws, drill pilot holes and then sink the screws in. Then cut a hole for the latch. Only cut it big enough for the deadlatch latch to go in, not the button. I don’t have a picture of this but these people made a great picture illustrating this:
