As a quick aside...

“You can never have too many bottle openers” is one of the many mottos I live by. I have a few I’m ridiculously sentimental about: the waiter’s friend my college roommate’s dad gave everyone when we graduated, the card opener I’ve had in my wallet for a decade and never leave home without, the one with the ad for a random Japanese beer from the weird karaoke place we used to frequent in the city. There are always a few scattered around whenever we have people over just in case. And now we have a permanent one outside and I love it. 

Way back when we moved into the new house, I wanted to change the locks on the front and garage doors. This is partly b/c that’s just the sort of thing you do when you move somewhere, but also b/c you couldn’t open the front door using the outside handle and that seems like it would be important. 

So I ordered some matching sets online and when I did this bottle opener and cap catch set came up as “people also purchased.”

“Sure,” I thought. “Why not? We’ll use it somewhere.” Damn you Amazon, your algorithm works again.

It took a while, but I eventually figured out how to put it up in a spot where it would be most useful, outside next to the grill. I just so happened to have a scrap board that fit between the railing slats, and using some scrap wood and kreg screws it fits just fine. It’s gotten quite a workout this summer with all the guests we’ve been having so score one more for having mottos to live by.

I’m not taking this down to take pictures of how it got secured, so you’ll have to use your imagination. But I had some scraps from trimming the 2x10 boards that I kregged to the inside of two railing posts as supports. With those on, I stained the board I was putting the opener on and attached it to the supports. Then it was as easy as putting the opener and catch on, and we’re ready to go. Leaving the screw exposed makes it look sloppy but it opens beers fine and that’s all I was really going for. Sometimes it’s alright to focus on function over form.