 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Okay, welcome, welcome to Unhinged with the DoorDork where door hardware nerds get together to slam and knock on different door fails, bad installs, code violations, all of the above. We learn, we laugh and sometimes we even cry because of some of those fails, but most importantly, we dork out on some doors and we learn something why we do it. Today, we do have a very special guest, Mr. Aaron Kramer here. We were just chatting right before this and we've been chatting for about over a year originally. So you're one of the OG original Dork. So thank you for joining us today. If you wanna introduce yourself then tell us a little fun fact about yourself as well. Sure, yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me on. We definitely, our relationship with door geekiness goes back a little bit over a year already. I remember seeing some of your content and I was like, I gotta talk to this guy because some of the stuff maybe laughs, some of them maybe cry, but this is all very interesting. So yep, I'm a senior estimator within the doorframe hardware industry. Been an industry for eight plus years now and enjoy it. It's got a lot of different aspects to it that I really enjoy the architecture design, being part of infrastructure, building things. And it's a lot of interesting things. Definitely a lot of details, some complicated things but all in all really enjoyable. Fun fact about me, I take vocal lessons and I can sing opera and enjoy singing opera. Wow, wow. Maybe one of these times we'll have to have you like present to us. Yeah, we could try that. Project the balcony, right? Is that what they say? Project to the top balcony, something like that? Yep, yep, yep. Hit some high notes, yeah. Nice, nice. Aaron, random question for you. When did you know you were a door hardware nerd? When did that happen? When did you know the day or what happened when you knew that you were- Great question. I think at some point when I started in this industry and I kid you not, I had a dream about some locks or at least there were some locks in my dreams, something like that. And I remember the very next day I was like, okay, I have been indoctrinated. I am now part of this industry officially. So I think that was a funny moment. But truthfully speaking, at a certain point when I became comfortable with the industry, learned things and outs, I really started to enjoy it. And we were chatting before, take some time to understand the industry. So perhaps a year and a half or two after getting involved and really getting the flow and feel for it, it felt good and I enjoyed it. So I think both those aspects come together. When I got into it far enough that I was dreaming about the locks, that's what I knew. Yeah. Was it a dream or a nightmare? No, it was a dream. It was pleasant. Everything was pleasant. I didn't wake up screaming. And as always, there's the lovely me and Meryl. You know her, you love her. Why don't you say hi and another fun fact maybe? Yeah, all right. So welcome to this episode. My fun fact is that I have a title of nobility, a Duchess. Duchess of Door Hardware. And I will only answer to that from now on. Yes, Duchess. So Benji, why don't you share your fun fact? Oh, okay. So some of you might know this, but I am an avid dork about board games. So strategic board games, I probably have over 250 different types of board games. Many people are like, wait, there's that many board games out there. Yes, once you're in it, you know, you know, when you're in it. But I also really thoroughly enjoyed chess. And one day I want to be known as the highest ranked chess player in the door hardware industry. So any of you or nerds want to challenge me, bring it on, let's play. Mia, how's your chess game? I don't think I've ever played it. Okay, I'm not great either. So you are the king of this group, at least. You're the highest ranked of this episode. Where do you find these board games? That's what I want to know. Where do you do your research? Amazon definitely has a lot now. They're tapping into that line, but most major cities have like a massive game store. Anywhere where you find Magic the Gathering cards or like Yu-Gi-Oh cards or even like Pokemon cards, a lot of those same shops will sell board games as well. Interesting. Where do you keep them all? And what door hardware is on that closet? Yeah, right? Yeah, we have this closet and we have like basically the shelving unit along the whole wall. And what I've done over the years because I've gotten so many, I've taken them out of their boxes and like condensed them into bags and a little organization tubs. And so I've got a big tub that has probably my top hundred in there. That's so whenever game night comes up, I just grab the tub and I'm like, good to go. Wow. So for those who don't know how Unhinge works, I will share my screen. I'll show a door hardware fail of some sorts. We'll knock, we react, we share out any helpful tips and then we'll give it a knocking score. One being not too knocking bad. 10 being very knocking bad. Let's get this taken care of. Let's call the AHA fire marshal. Let's get people involved. So far I don't think we've had a 10 but we've got a couple of nines. So there's always a chance for first. So we'll see. Yeah. Are you guys ready to dive in? Yeah. Okay. Are you ready? Let's do it. Oh my, what happened here? So someone broke through this apartment door but they did it in a way that was pretty creative. They saw the Medeco Maxim deadbolt on the door and didn't want to mess with that at all. And so they've decided it was easier to go through the door to break into this. Well, you know, first thing that comes to mind is shows the true durability of these, you know, locks that, you know, they don't even want to mess with them. That's good. The downside is that they mess with the door. That is one broken door but it looks like there's like styrofoam inside of that door. I don't know if that was a high quality door to begin with or maybe that's asbestos or something. But it even looks, is it like cracked, you know the handle under the handle? Is it cracked there too? Yeah. Yeah. So I think they tried to go in underneath and then went up above or... Wow. Well, it looks like the handle had some abuse also. They were trying to get into the lock as well. Yeah, it looked like they almost like had a pry bar or something to try to bust the handle up. That's got some dents or some dinks but yeah, they weren't getting past special with that strike guard on there as well. Yeah, yeah. The whole door. Well, that's good. So the locking mechanism on this door is pretty secure. That's good. Unfortunately, you know, I guess these find other ways to get through and they found one here. Moral of the story I guess is, you know besides having a very secure lock and deadbolt is you gotta have a reinforced door too, maybe. If you wanna really keep someone out, yeah, maybe not have styrofoam in your door or something. Wow. I mean, I would say this is pretty gnarly. You know, it's going right through the door. What a way to find a way around the lock. Yeah. I mean, the styrofoam's probably there for sound deadening. My guess is this is probably like in an apartment type complex, right? It's probably flimsy door gauge. So yeah, they were easily able to get through there, but. What kind of material do you think the door actually was? I'm saying was it, I see some sort of panel type, but like, you know, that foam tape was probably some layer, but what was the main layer of that? I mean, I was originally thinking metal, but it could be very thin. Yeah, if it's a 20-gauge door or something. Yeah. 20-gauge. But if it's a residential door. It's really don't do metal for interior, you know, residential, whether entry or interior unit. You know, prior to this happening, probably a code violation seemed okay, but now it's definitely not fire rated. Yeah. Yeah. And depending on the state that you're in, this wouldn't be one motion egress as well. A lot of states are grandfathered into this situation where you're okay to have a deadbolt, but now a lot of apartment complexes, especially are requiring you to have a single motion. So you would have to have an interconnected lock if you're going to a deadbolt. Yeah. A lot of the new complexes have some sort of connected hardware. I don't know about you, Aaron. I haven't found, I mean, I know there's some better interconnected locks out there, but for the most part, I think there's just too many moving pieces in there that people really struggle with. And I think overall like tend to fall apart faster. I would much rather specify like an interconnected mortise lock for interior doors, but people often value engineer mortise locks, even though in the long run it's going to save you money. Right, right. Exactly. There's a lot of the e that comes into play. I've seen a lot of stuff recently that has, you know, for the entries it specifically has, you know, the salto or, you know, the caba, whatever, you know, some sort of access control. So those are all very different than, you know, typical mechanical setups, you know, like this one. But yeah, typical, you know, mechanical setups, like you said, a lot of times the e comes into play and it, you know, the changes, you know, how it ends up. This is quite interesting. Durable lock needs improvement door. Right, right. I remember those old Maxim deadbolt commercials. Those ones were awesome. Like, if that didn't speak to the string, we need to bring Mr. T back, right? That's right. They can use this for marketing material too, you know. Yeah, it's easier to go through the door than through the lock. Okay, knocking score. What do you guys think? I'm going to give it like a six and a half, you know, like, you know, I think it has, like I said, good durability, you know, there's some, they had to obviously put in the time to get through the door, but I think it, you know, speaks to the, you know, whoever's trying to get through to their, you know, creativity, but overall, you know, it's pretty durable as is. So, you know, it's not terrible. I think I'm just right in the middle. Five, the, I mean, the hardware, I think the hardware was good. We don't know why they were able to get through the door. Was the door the right door? Was the door the wrong door? We know locks keep honest people out, right? So I'm just in the middle. Yeah. I wouldn't say there's any like obvious code violation or any concern about this. Like, so yeah, that's, those are great knocking scores. Okay. You guys ready for the second one? If you want to be featured on a future episode of Unhinged, leave a comment down below.