Dale Orcutt · First Edition

From the Dale Orcutt channel

The lock on your front door is not held by the wall.

It is held by a little metal plate screwed into a strip of soft trim, with screws three quarters of an inch long. That is true of almost every house in America, and it is the first page of this book. I am Dale Orcutt. This is 276 fixes, one to a page, that I have done on my own doors and on my mother’s.

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“He is not looking for a way in. He is looking for a reason not to bother.”

Nothing in it needs a contractor, a subscription, or a monthly plan.

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Time and Noise

— Cheap, Reversible Fixes for Every Entry Point in Your House

Dale Orcutt

Instant PDF + EPUB Any device · print at home

307 pages · 276 fixes · 23 chapters

01 · The two words

Time and noise. That is the whole of it.

Ask anybody who has spent a career looking at broken-into houses what actually stops one and you get the same two words back. A man who should not be at your door is not afraid of you and he is not afraid of a sticker in your window. He is afraid of standing there too long, and he is afraid of being heard.

Every fix in this book does one of those two jobs. It makes him take longer, or it makes him louder. Nothing in here turns your house into a fortress, because it does not need to be one. It only needs to be slower and louder than he is willing to put up with.

There are no weapons in this book. Not one, not anywhere, and not by hint. There are no traps either, nothing rigged to hurt anybody. And nothing in it stops you getting out of your own house in a hurry.

02 · What’s inside

23 chapters. 276 fixes. One to a page.

Every page is one thing: what it is, what to do about it, and what it costs and how long it takes. There is a picture on every one. Here is the whole book, chapter by chapter.

Read your own house

3 chapters

What a Burglar Actually Looks At
The Front Porch Checklist: Twelve Signals
What Is Visible Through Your Windows

Doors

5 chapters

The Saturday Door Fix
The Back Door, and Why It Is Always Weaker
Garage and Side Doors
Sliding Doors Without Buying a New Door
Basement Doors, Cellar Hatches and Crawl Spaces

Windows and glass

3 chapters

Window Locks Before 1990
Security Film, and What It Does Not Do
Upstairs Windows, and What a Ladder Reaches

Outside the walls

4 chapters

No Wiring Motion Lights
Gravel, Hedges and Thorny Planting
Fences, Gates and the Boundary
The Shed, the Ladder and the Tools Left Out

Keys, mail and people

2 chapters

Keys: Who Has One, and Where They Hide
Mail, Packages and Deliveries

Habits and the plan

6 chapters

Living Alone Habits That Cost Nothing
The House That Looks Lived In When You Are Away
If You Rent, or Cannot Drill Into Anything
The Fifty Dollar Plan
The Next Hundred and Fifty
The Ten Tools To Own

Prices in the book are what I saw in 2026 at an ordinary hardware shop, written as ranges. Take them as the size of a thing, not the price of it.

Dale, at his own front door

03 · A note from Dale

I wrote this for one person.

She is in her seventies, she lives on her own in a house she has owned for decades, and somebody quoted her forty dollars a month to watch it for her. She is not frightened. She is practical, and slightly annoyed at being sold to.

What she wanted was one thing she could do on a calm Saturday afternoon with a screwdriver she already owns. Nobody would tell her what it was, because there is no money in telling her. So I wrote it all down.

Almost nothing in here is clever. It is screws, mostly. It is a length of wood in a track. It is a light pointed the right way instead of the wrong way. The reason so few people have done these things is not that they are difficult.

Dale Orcutt

04 · Get the book

Time and Noise

Cheap, Reversible Fixes for Every Entry Point in Your House

First Edition

$39

one payment · yours forever

276 fixes, one to a page, with a picture on every one
What each one costs and how long it takes
23 chapters across doors, windows, glass, lights, the garden and the boundary
Two spending plans at the back, starting at four dollars of screws
PDF and EPUB, both included

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