Breaking Down the Door
aka ‘The Rescue’.
Normally, if I break something in the house, I’ll be blamed and held responsible for it.
Normally, I’d be in considerable trouble for kicking one of the house doors down.
But it’s not normal when your two year old goes into the spare bedroom and closes the door behind him, and then suddenly the door handle doesn’t work. It’s not even like it nearly worked; you could turn the door handle as much as you like but the door bolt wouldn’t move at all.
Now, it’s not like we’d ever had any problems with this door before: we do have one door that doesn’t quite open, and you have to give it a nudge to push it open, but this one simply wasn’t moving.
And now we’ve got an increasingly hysterical two year old trapped behind the door. So we need to get the door open, and we need it open now.
Plan A: turn door handle, bang into door, to try and ‘bump’ it open. No success.
Plan B: attempt to unscrew door handle and manually turn the bar (you know, the square metal bit that goes from one side of the door handle to the other). Metal bar turns quite happily, no sign of movement in the bolt.
Re-assess problem: hysterical, crying two year old in room. Door that doesn’t work. Hinges on the inside of the door, so as the door is currently closed, we don’t really have any access to them.
Conclusion: as door is broken anyway there’s no harm in bashing it open.
And I’ve seen people do it in films often enough. You run up to the door, shout “police”, and shoot the lock a couple of times, then you run in and grab the suspect as they attempt to climb out of the window. I’ll have to ad-lib a little, as I don’t have a shooter, I’m not in the police, and I’m rather hoping my two-year old won’t open the window and attempt to climb out.
So I simply turn the handle as much as I can, and kick the door near to the lock. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what they say is the weak point of the door — break the bit next to the lock, as opposed to the whole door?
Only there’s no sign of it budging…
Another sharp kick and the door stays exactly where it is. Hmm. The lock seems surprisingly strong — although part of the problem may be that the rest of the door appears to be acting as a shock absorber by ‘bouncing’ around it.
Another potential problem may be that the door opens outwards; if it had opened inward, me hitting it might have had a chance of ‘popping’ the door open, but as it opens outwards, that’s a non-starter.
Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing…
Check to see which way the door opens by checking the hinges. If the door opens towards you, kicking it down is going to be next to impossible. Art of Manliness: How To Break Down a Door
You probably won’t be able to kick it in if you are not kicking in the direction the door normally swings, so you’ll want to check the swing of the door before you break your foot. When the door opens outward, removing the door hinges might be an easier way to get in. However, many commercial door hinges have theft proof hinge pins that do not allow them to be removed.Wikihow: Kick Down A Door
And all those smart-arse comments around like “find your keys”, “climb through an open window” and so on don’t really help in this case. For a start, it’s not locked, it’s the door mechanism itself that appears to be broken. Secondly, while there is a window in the room, you’d have to stand on the conservatory roof in order to get to it, and I’m not convinced that’s a good, or a safe, idea.
And it’s not a great deal of help telling me that I probably won’t be able to kick it in as I’m not kicking the way the door normally swings. Yes, it might well be easier if I could access the hinges, or the door opened te other way, but I can’t and it doesn’t, and I’ve got an increasingly anxious child behind it, so I need to get it open. Similarly, advising me to use a ram or a sledgehammer may be all very well, but I don’t have a ram or a sledgehammer.
But maybe if I can’t get it open, I can at least get through it.
Which brings me to plan two.
Plan two: it’s an interior door. Maybe the whole ‘break through the lock’ thing is the wrong approach. Perhaps I should just kick through the door instead?
Stand, facing away form the door. Shout to child to go as far away from the door as possible. Kick door with heel, hard (described as a ‘mule kick’ on one of those sites — seemed the obvious way to do it for me). Door cracks slightly below the handle. Kick hard, again. Door cracks further. Repeat the process many times and the front part of the door — below the handle only — comes off, revealing all the cardboard ‘padding’ inside and the interior frame of the door.
From here I can then kick through the back part of the door, and make a little ‘tunnel’ through which I can invite SWP to climb out safely. Door is by now a little broken. We’re going to need a new door.
However, Daddy is a hero to GLW and SWP. Daddy has broken down door to rescue small child. Hurrah! However, I would suggest that as an interior door — that opens towards you — is still not that easy to kick through (it’s not that difficult, it’s just messy, noisy and time consuming — and obviously fun), I would advise against needing to kick through a solid wooden exterior door.
…although there now is kind of part of me (the part that wanted to shoot the lock off, the part that likes to think of me as being like James Bond) that wants the opportunity to try.
Hello. I am 
It happens to the best of ‘em - some of them more than once.
Kai got trapped in his Grandparents house - in literally the smallest room of the house. He’d only gone in to use the toilet but decided to lock the door. And yes like yours the door opened outwards. But kicking it in wasn’t an option this time.
However it did have an open window - alright the window wasn’t much bigger than A4 but at least it was open. So up the ladder I go, with a long pole. Reach through window and try and manoeuvre a ‘loose’ bolt. Also trying to avoid Kai (not that easy in a small space).
Eventually we managed it, but he must have been in there a good half hour.
A few years later he went missing in school right at the end of the day. he’d gone to the toilet (notice a theme starting here?) and somehow the lock broke and he became trapped. No-one noticed for over half an hour. Most of the kids had gone home! He was more upset over this one. I think the first time was just a big adventure for him.
I still worry when goes to the toilet on his own in starnge places - trains especially because I wouldn’t be able to break those doors down!