Lock Replacement & Installation in Hayward

There comes a point where rekeying is the wrong answer and everybody knows it. A deadbolt that reaches its strike only when the door is lifted with a knee. A knob that turns freely and moves nothing. A keypad lock on a rental that has eaten three sets of batteries and now refuses every code, including the manager's. A garage side door in the Highlands held shut by a hasp screwed into soft trim. The original builder knobs on a Burbank tract house, seventy years old and finally worn past a key. Eden Locksmith carries deadbolts, knobs, levers and handlesets on the van, in finishes chosen to sit quietly next to the hinges and the house numbers already on the door.

The tape measure comes out before the screwdriver. Thickness, backset and bore vary more between Hayward houses than owners expect: a 1950s tract door is thinner than a modern slab, a stucco-era door on Prospect Hill may carry a mortise pocket no cylindrical lock can use without a filler plate, and an apartment door on Tennyson is often hollow metal that wants through-bolts rather than wood screws. Where a mortise pocket exists, the replacement is another mortise lock behind the original plate, so the old brass stays on the house. A door already bored for what is going into it takes twenty to thirty minutes. A door that is not gets bored or plated first, and the fit is shown to you before a single screw is driven. Keys are cut at the van, and if you want one key for the whole house the new lock is pinned to the doors you already have. On a rental, a lever outlasts a knob and is easier on an older hand, which is why most managers ask for one.

Fitted, hardware included, a lock is $109 to $289, with the $89 service call inside that figure. At $109 it is a residential deadbolt on a door already prepared for it. Toward $289 sit a heavier grade of deadbolt, a lever set, a handleset with its matching bolt, a mortise lock behind original trim, and any boring or plating the door turns out to need. The evening addition of $45 and the overnight addition of $80 are counted into the figure the same way. A restricted cylinder, a fire-rated door or an odd preparation is named at the start, when you send photographs, not at the end when the old lock is already off.

Say what happened on the call and send two photographs, one of the lock face and one of the door edge. The figure per lock is said on that call. The van leaves Jackson Street, and a text names the technician and gives a thirty-minute window. The old lock comes off only after the door is measured, the new one goes on, the strike is set, keys are cut, and the bolt is thrown with the door shut against its weatherstrip, because a bolt tested on an open door proves nothing. The receipt shows the figure from the call, lock by lock.