Lock Replacement & Installation in Mountain View

Two jobs share this page. The first is plain replacement, where a cylinder or a whole lock has worn past useful repinning. The second is fitting a deadbolt on a door that has never carried one, which on the older streets is more common than most owners expect.

Those older front doors were hung with a knob set and nothing above it: one cylinder and a latch about half an inch long. Many are still exactly that. On newer houses the front door has a solid deadbolt while the door from the garage into the house carries a passage latch, which quietly makes the weakest lock on the property the one behind the door that opens from a remote. Both are short visits and both change the arithmetic at that door.

The lock under a reader is its own case. When a cylinder in an entrance panel or a mail hall has gone past saving, the replacement is chosen on size, cam and tailpiece so it sits in the existing preparation and the plate goes back flat, rather than on how it looks in a catalog. The panel, the reader and the wiring are not disturbed, and the building keeps whatever key convention it already runs on. Where that door is shared, who orders the work is settled on the call between you and the building.

Before anything goes on, the door itself is measured, because on doors this old nothing can be assumed. Thickness runs thin on some of them. The backset may be two and three eighths where the new lock expects two and three quarters. The cross bore is frequently narrower than the two and one eighth inches modern hardware is made for. Where a bore has to be opened or a door plated, that happens first and is shown to you before a screw goes in.

Replacing is not always the answer, and saying so is part of the job. A key that has begun to need force is often a cylinder wanting a strip and a clean, or a strike that has crept and can be moved a few millimeters. Both are part of a visit rather than a purchase. Test it yourself in ten seconds: turn the key with the door standing wide open. If it still fights you, the cylinder is at fault. If it turns freely open and jams when shut, the lock is fine and the strike has moved.

Fitted with the hardware, replacement runs $133 to $345, the $89 visit inside. A cylinder swapped into a preparation that already suits it is $133. A full deadbolt on an old door that needs boring or plating, a handleset, or two doors in one stop moves toward $345. Between 8pm and midnight the $133 job is $185, and between midnight and 7am it is $225. The make, the grade and the finish are named while the old lock is still on the door, new keys are cut at the van, and the old hardware is left with you unless you want it taken. Ninety days on the workmanship.