I bought it at a garage sale, a couple of my doorknobs needed replacing and the entire bag was $2. But now I own half a dozen doorknobs and dead bolts I don’t need and a grocery bag full of (it looks like) every key the previous owner ever had.
I’m thinking about taking some of the keys and making an art project with them. If I can’t find anything to do with the superfluous knobs I might sell them for scrap.
Give me some ideas!
If you’re looking to expand out into the mugging industry, then you’ll need something sturdier than a grocery bag to hold the doorknobs. Traditional wisdom suggests going with a sack of some sort.
Are they neat old-fashioned doorknobs and keys, or mostly modern ones?
For the doorknobs, you could attach them to a strip of wood and make a coat rack, with knobs instead of hooks.
I know a doper who is planning on rekeying the doors to his house. If you want I can tell him about you and maybe you two can work something out.
This is exactly what I did with old knobs in a variety of colors; put them on old, weathered wood and topped it with a thin shelf. It turned out both functional and beautiful.
You beat me to it. That’s what I was going to suggest.
Cool-looking antique doorknobs are worth money to rehabbers. If you want alternate uses for them, there are many. I’ve even seen them in a bowl on the coffee table. Use them as pulls on larger pieces of furniture. I saw them as end-caps on a curtain rod and as a tie-back anchor on drapes. You could top the back of a boring ladder-back chair, if the proportions are correct.
My husband took all the doorknobs out of the old farmhouses he rented prior to moving into this house. I should look around for them. He’s a pack rat.
I’ll have to dig through the bag again, I know some were brand new deadbolts still in the box, some tarnished older (though not especially unique) knobs.
I had thought of putting them on a curtain rod, but wasn’t quite sure how I’d go about that. The coat rack idea is pretty cool, I could probably do that. Ooooh, and I’ve got the perfect spot next to my door. Hmm, back to the store again? The craft store sells unfinished plaques for quite cheap, I could paint or stain it as I wish and mount them on that.
Any ideas for the keys? There’s several hundred of them, I was going to incorporate some into a painting, but I don’t know about the others.
ETA: If someone does want the deadbolts, let me know. I can’t think of anything cool to do with those and at least one of them was still in the box.
For the keys, you could make a windchime of them, or string them on fishing line to make a bead curtain:
| | |
| | |
| KEY |
| | |
| | |
KEY | KEY
| | |
| | |
| KEY |
| | |
| | |
KEY | KEY
| | |
| | |
| KEY |
etc.
On preview: sorry, don’t know how to code it to make it clearer; I’m trying to show three strings, there would be more space between the columns.
I was also going to suggest windchimes with the keys. I have a whole bunch of keys from when we remodeled the place I work and they had to replace a bunch of locks, everyone turned in the old keys to me so I was planning on making some windchimes with them. Maybe add some colorful beads to the chime to make it look more interesting.
You could melt them down and probably make a good buck off the copper.
I hear there’s a guy named Ed who might be interested.
did you sign up for the white elephant exchange?
A bag full of doorknobs and not one single suggestion towards acts of gratuitous physical violence?
:shakes head: What has happened to this place. 
Everyone’s over in the nekkid pix thread. 
You could keep all the doorknobs in a sack. Then, whenever you do something foolish, you can point to the sack and say, “At least I’m not as dumb as that!”
I keep a bag of hammers around for the same purpose.
Pssst. See Post #2.
:):):):)
Faith Restored!!!
Throw a big party.
Give all the door knobs to the females.
Give all the keys to the males.
Stick 'em on Craigslist. If no takers, try Freecycle.