Hayward neighborhood · 24/7
Prospect Hill and Upper B Street locksmith work on houses that have kept the same front door, and the same hardware, for eighty years
The slope above downtown along Upper B Street and the streets off it: houses from the 1900s through the 1930s with deep porches and mortise sets in the door edge, long-owned homes, back cottages and divided upstairs units, narrow streets and short driveways on a grade.
21 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Prospect Hill is twenty-one minutes up B Street, and its calls are about doors that were hung before the war and have not been changed since. A front door here has a mortise case in its edge, a plate with a knob and a keyhole, and often a second lock screwed on later when the household stopped trusting the first one. The later lock is the one a pocket key opens, and that is the cylinder that gets rekeyed at $24 to $39. The old set stays where it is. A knob that wobbles is a worn spindle and a set screw, changed without lifting the plate. A latch that no longer springs back is a spring inside the case, and the case comes out through the edge of the door, is cleaned and goes back. Only a case cracked at the bolt is replaced, and a new case fits behind the original plate at $109 to $289, so the porch looks the same from the sidewalk.
Houses that have not sold in thirty years have keys nobody can account for. Over that time copies went to a grown daughter, a neighbor who watered plants, a roofer and two contractors. The first visit is a count, not a sale: front door, back door, the door from the porch into the kitchen, the garage side door, the gate at the top of the drive, sometimes a cottage at the back. At $24 to $39 per cylinder the count is what makes the figure, and it is done on the call rather than at the door. Where a house has been divided and the upstairs is rented, the shared entry is pinned so both keys pass it and neither key opens the other door. That arrangement is explained before the work and repeated on the receipt.
A lockout on this hill is $115 to $199 and is picked. A drilled cylinder in a 1912 door means a plate that is no longer made anywhere, and no lockout is worth that. The safe in the back bedroom, whose combination went with the last owner, is opened at $175 to $479, almost always without harm to the door. The streets are narrow on the grade and the van parks where it can; nothing is added for the walk up. Evening work carries $45 between 8pm and midnight and $80 after, inside the one figure, and calls are answered 24/7.
Say whether the front door still has its keyhole plate and whether a second lock sits above the knob on the inside. A photo of the inside face settles most of it. If the upstairs is rented, say which door is yours and whether the entry is shared.
Most requested in Prospect Hill & Upper B
FAQ
Asked before the phone comes out
How long before the van is on my street?+
Twenty-four minutes is the average across Hayward, because the van works out of Jackson Street instead of being sent over from another city. Downtown and B Street run about 16 minutes, Jackson Triangle and Burbank 18, Prospect Hill and the Cherryland and Ashland strip 21, San Leandro 22, San Lorenzo 24, Mt. Eden and Tennyson and Southgate 26, Eden Shores 28, Hayward Highlands and Fairway Park 31, and Castro Valley and Union City around 28 to 31. The hill above the campus and Castro Valley are the slowest runs on this map, and that is said on the call rather than left to you watching the street. The window you get by text is drawn from wherever the van sits when you ring, not from that average.
Does the lock have to be destroyed to get the door open?+
Almost never, and never without you saying so first. Picks, decoders and bypass tools handle apartment cylinders on Tennyson Road, builder deadbolts on the Burbank tracts, the mortise sets on the slope above downtown, aluminum shopfronts, most car doors and most safes, and the lock is left doing its job afterward. The exception is a cylinder that is high-security, already smashed, or welded shut around a snapped blade. When that is what the door is, you hear it plainly, you hear what would go back in, and the choice is yours. The number does not move either way.
What is inside the number I hear on the phone, and what could add to it?+
The $89 service call, the labor, whatever part goes on the door, and the night hour if there is one, rolled into a single number. Stairs, a gated lot, a buzzer lobby, a unit at the back of a complex, a long strip driveway on a San Leandro avenue: none of that moves it. The one thing that can add is work you decide on once the technician is there, such as putting new pins in the back door while the front one is standing open. That gets a number of its own out loud, and it starts when you say so and not before.
Is it more at night, on a weekend or on a holiday?+
Saturday, Sunday and holidays cost the same as a Tuesday afternoon. The clock is the only thing that changes it: $45 goes on between 8pm and midnight, $80 between midnight and 7am. Both are folded into the number you hear, so nothing surfaces later. A house lockout that is $115 in daylight is quoted as $160 at eleven at night and $195 at four in the morning, and the receipt matches what you agreed to.
I rent. Can I get my own door opened without calling the landlord first?+
Yes. About half of this city rents, and a tenant is the customer, not a complication. For a lockout, bring photo ID that shows the address, or ID plus something on your phone that ties you to the unit: a lease page, a utility bill, a rent receipt, addressed mail. Give the building and the unit number on the call so the van is not circling the block looking for a door. Nobody is telephoned about you, and no permission from an owner is needed to put you back inside the place you pay for.
I own units and need them rekeyed between tenants. How does that work?+
Rekeying is counted per cylinder, so a fourplex with front and back doors is eight cylinders and comes back as one number. Each unit can sit on its own key with a single management key above the set, so what you carry is one key rather than a ring. Old keys come back to you in labeled bags to check against whatever a tenant handed over. The receipt lists every door by unit. A manager acting for an owner who lives elsewhere can approve the work with a management agreement or a text from the owner, and the receipt can be addressed to either of you or both.
Our building has a buzzer panel and a lobby door. Is that something you handle?+
Yes, and on the apartment blocks along Tennyson Road and Mission Boulevard it is a large share of the week. A door that releases when the buzzer sounds and then never catches again is usually an electric strike drifting out of line or a deadlatch that has stopped grabbing, not a dead panel. Entry panels, strikes, closers, mailbox banks and shared laundry doors are all carried on the van. Anything larger than a single door gets counted in person before a number is put on it.
Our house in Burbank still has the hardware the builder put on in the fifties. Does all of it have to come off?+
Usually not. The flat streets in Burbank, Glen Eden and Mt. Eden are full of original knob sets and slim deadbolts that turn perfectly well and only need repinning so keys from four owners ago stop working. Three things are worth changing: a cylinder with real wear in it, a deadbolt whose throw no longer reaches the frame, and a strike screwed into trim instead of the stud behind it, which is the single detail that decides whether a door survives a kick. Which of the three applies to your door is said before anything is unscrewed.
Do you come to Southland, the BART lots and the college parking?+
Yes, and a good share of the car work happens in exactly those places: Southland Mall, the Hayward and South Hayward BART parking, the Chabot College and Cal State East Bay lots, the Executive Airport, a carport behind an apartment block, a driveway on a Burbank street. Name the lot and give a landmark, a row or the color of the car, because Southland on a Saturday is a great deal of parking. A gated garage needs someone able to let the van through the gate. None of it changes the number.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
The van is already in town, and the number comes before it moves
Hayward, San Lorenzo, Cherryland and Ashland, San Leandro, Castro Valley and Union City, 24/7, holidays included. Describe the door, hear one number with the $89 visit inside it, and the lock gets opened without damage wherever it can be. The receipt says what the call said. It runs the same way whether the lease is in your name or the deed is.