In your home you no doubt have various interior doors with locks (bathroom doors, bedroom doors and so on). Some of these locks may only lock on the inside, requiring a special tool or flathead screw driver to open them, where you instead the tool in the hole of the lock (these are normally bathroom doors). For other door locks, you may want to be able to lock the door from the outside. For example, locking a bedroom door from the outside so your kids can’t enter the bedroom and mess things up.

A few years ago I wanted to change all the locks in my house to key locks which used the same key as the front door (so I wouldn’t have to have a bunch of keys on my keychain). However, this process wasn’t very straightforward as I would have to buy the door lock from the hardware store and before I could install it I needed to take it to a locksmith to get re-keyed so it would match the key to the front door. The charge from the locksmith wasn’t much (about $10) but the time spent going to the locksmith, who often had limited hours, is what got annoying.

This led me to do some research on door locks and I found locks where you can re-key them yourself. The ones I found were by Kwikset and were labeled as having SmartKey technology. These keys let you re-key them to your selected key on your own without having to go to a locksmith. They were not much more expensive than the standard locks. Here is a lock with SmartKey technology on Amazon, it is only $21: Kwikset 94002-862 Cove Keyed Entry Knob Featuring Smartkey Security In Satin Nickel

The process for re-keying the lock is also very easy, see more details in the following video.

The official video from Kwikset on the re-keying process can be found here:

I would recommend these locks to anyone, they are very easy to use and save you the hassle of having to go to the locksmith.