Two doors, and the one you actually use
About 220 Eichlers went up in Fairgrove in 1960 and 1961, and they do not meet the street the way the tract houses a mile east do. From the sidewalk you see a garage, a fence and a gate. Through the gate is a courtyard open to the sky, with a tree in it. Across the courtyard is the front door: a flat slab, no panels, no glass in it, with a knob and sometimes a deadbolt.
In practice the household treats the gate as the front door. It is the one that gets opened twenty times a day, the one the groceries come through, the one that is latched last thing at night. The slab door across the courtyard stands open for most of a warm evening. Sixty years of habit have quietly swapped the two, and the locks on them usually reflect the habit rather than the structure.
Which one holds the house
The slab door. The gate is a panel on hinges set in a fence a person can step over, guarding a courtyard with no roof on it. It is a good gate. It stops a dog leaving, it stops a package walking off the step, and it keeps the wind out of the atrium. It is not a barrier and it was never drawn as one.
So the arrangement that makes sense is the opposite of what we usually find. The money goes on the slab door, because that is the one holding the house, and the convenience goes on the gate, because that is the one you use. Where a household has spent three hundred dollars on the gate and left the slab door on the knob it was hung with, the money is on the wrong side of the courtyard.
What the slab is made of
An Eichler front door is typically an inch and three-eighths thick, flush, a veneer face over a light frame, with stiles that can be under four inches wide. That thickness is at the bottom of what modern locks are rated for, and a few keypad units want the full inch and three-quarters before the interior housing sits flat. It is the first thing measured, not the last, and it is why a lock chosen from a photograph so often goes back in its box.
The jamb is the other half of the story. In a post-and-beam house the post behind the jamb is doing the structural work, so the jamb itself is thin. A strike held by three-quarter-inch screws in that jamb is fastened to a strip of wood and nothing else. Three-inch screws that reach the post change the door more than any lock will, they take a few minutes, and they are part of a visit rather than something you buy.
The gate, and the lockout it produces
The call that comes from these streets is a person standing inside their own courtyard. The gate has swung shut and latched behind them on its spring, the slab door is locked, and there is a wall on all four sides. It is a house lockout, $135 to $245 with the $89 visit already inside the figure, plus $55 between 8pm and midnight or $95 after midnight, said on the call rather than at the gate.
The repair that ends the repeat is on the gate, and it is small. The gate latch takes a cylinder like any other, so it is pinned to the house key at $29 to $47 and one key then opens both doors. Where the household is genuinely in and out all day, a keypad on the gate at $199 to $495 is defensible, with one caution said out loud: a gate latch lives outdoors, unshaded, and electronics in that position age faster than the same unit on a sheltered front door. Whatever goes on the gate, keep a keyway in it.
Glass within reach of a thumb turn
The other thing an Eichler has is glass, sometimes full height, sometimes right beside the door. Owners ask about a deadbolt keyed on both sides, so that reaching the inside turn does no good. We do not fit one on a door a household leaves through, and the reason is not liability language. It is that on the night you need that door you will be looking for a small key in the dark, and everyone in the house has to know where it is.
The alternatives are duller and better. A bolt with a turn that can itself be locked when the house is empty and released when it is occupied. A strike that reaches the post, which is what actually resists force. Laminate film on the panel nearest the door, which is a glazier's job rather than ours and worth pricing separately. If someone quotes you a key-both-sides deadbolt on an Eichler front door without mentioning the way out, that tells you what to do with the quote.
The short count, and what it costs
An Eichler is fewer cylinders than the ranch houses around it: the gate, the slab door, the side door of the garage, sometimes a shed at the back. Three or four lines at $29 to $47 each, the $89 visit counted once for the stop, and one key when the technician leaves. A house that has changed hands recently is usually the whole list in under an hour.
A deadbolt fitted properly to the slab is $129 to $339 and a keypad is $199 to $495, and on a 1961 door the figure lands toward the top of the range for the reasons set out in the guide on 1962 doors: the hole is often narrower than today's standard and the leaf has had sixty years to move. Ninety days on the labor either way, and the mechanical key cut and tested before the van leaves.
Quick answers
I am locked in my own atrium. What happens?+
It is a house lockout at $135 to $245 with the $89 visit inside the figure, $55 more between 8pm and midnight and $95 after midnight. The gate latch is opened from the street side first, and the slab door usually does not have to be touched at all.
Can the gate and the front door run on one key?+
Yes, and it is the cheapest useful thing to do on an Eichler. The gate latch is rekeyed to match the house at $29 to $47. Where the two cylinders take different key blanks, one of them is swapped, which is what moves the figure to the upper end.
Will a keypad deadbolt fit an Eichler front door?+
Sometimes. The slab is often a true inch and three-eighths and the stiles are narrow, so the thickness, the bore and the stile are measured before anything is ordered. Where it will not fit, that is said before you buy the lock rather than after.
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