Dead as a Doornail

This door on the village church is not quite as dead as it looks. I have added extra wrinkles through a Photoshop layer (my skills are improving) to make its condition look somewhat desperate.

As dead as a doornail

Meaning: Dead, devoid of life (when applied to people, plants or animals). Finished with, unusable (when applied to inanimate objects).
Origin
This is old - at least 14th century. There's a reference to it in print in 1350, a translation of a French poem. The expression was in widespread colloquial use in England by the 16th century, when Shakespeare gave these lines to the rebel leader Jack Cade in King Henry VI, Part 2 (1592)
Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.
Doornails are the large-headed studs that were used in earlier times for strength and more recently as decoration. The practice was to hammer the nail through and then bend the protruding end over to secure it. This process, similar to riveting, was called clenching. This may be the source of the 'deadness', as such a nail would be unusable afterwards.
Charles Dickens was among the celebrated authors who liked the phrase and made a point of musing on it in A Christmas Carol: ‘Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.’ for a couple of pages!