May I brag for a moment...

When we bought our house over 15 years ago, the front door only had one regular old lock.  We live in  Miami. It's not New York City  but one lock does not seem like enough. We had a locksmith come out and put a medco lock on as a second lock. Medco keys cannot be duplicated without an id and you have to be the person who applied for the lock. In other words, your housekeeper can't make a copy of it.   

On Tuesday morning, the key broke in the lock.  It was my idea to use chewing gum and a coat hanger to try to retrieve it but luckily my husband put the kabash on that.   We contacted a locksmith. Because we have a fancy-schmancy Medco lock, the cost could be up to $300.

We googled "how to get a broken key out of a lock" and a tough guy type explained how to do it using a little wire "broken key retriever" tool.  Our locksmith does not sell them. Neither do the hardware stores.  Luckily Amazon did so we decided to risk the $17.50  it would cost to buy and ship the tools overnight to us (This was $17.50 total with shipping). They came the very next day (gotta love Amazon!) and they loooked like a lock picking kit or something.  No directions or anything.

My amazing, wonderful, handy husband was able to retrieve the key using the tool and some wd-40.  Woo Hoo$ 283.00 saved! Shoe money!  

Here is the dead key!

Isn't my spouse fabulous? Aren't I the smartest girl EVER to marry such a home-improvement stud?