Cupertino neighborhood · 24/7
Fairgrove: about 220 Eichler houses from 1960 and 1961, with two doors standing between the sidewalk and the living room
The tract of roughly 220 houses built in 1960 and 1961: flat rooflines, glass walls facing the garden, and a walled entry court at the front with a gate of its own, so there is a gate to get through before there is a front door to open. Fourteen minutes from the van.
~14 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The first question on every Fairgrove call is which of the two doors stopped you. The gate in the entry wall and the house door behind it are separate locks with separate problems, and the answer decides what comes off the van and how the technician reaches you. If the gate is shut and latched, that is where the work starts, and it is opened without taking the gate apart. If the gate is standing open and it is the house door, the visit is shorter. Either way a house lockout is $135 to $245 with the $89 service call sitting inside the figure, not added at the end.
These houses were built at a moment when door hardware had not settled on the sizes it uses now. The bores in an original Fairgrove door are narrower than what a lock bought today expects to find, and the leaf itself is thinner than a modern exterior slab. That combination is why so many people here end up with a keypad lock still in its packaging six weeks after ordering it. The lock is not wrong and the door is not wrong. They are sixty-five years apart. Opening the bore, correcting the backset and squaring a leaf that has moved is done first, then the lock goes on, and it is one appointment rather than two. Smart lock installation is $199 to $495 and the range is the door.
The gate is the piece people forget to budget for, because it is not really thought of as a lock. It stands outdoors through every season, the post beside it has moved with the ground under it, and the latch that used to catch cleanly now needs a lift and a shove. A cylinder in that position wears faster than anything on the house. Replacing gate hardware is $129 to $339, and where a code is wanted at the gate the unit has to be rated to sit in weather, which is a narrower choice than the shelf suggests. That gets said before you buy, not after it is installed.
People do ask what to do about the glass. The honest answer is that a heavier lock on the front door is not an answer to a wall of windows, and nobody here will pretend otherwise or talk you into hardware on that argument. What is worth doing when a Fairgrove house changes hands is ordinary and cheap: count the cylinders, including the gate, and repin them onto one key at $29 to $47 each so the keys handed out across sixty-five years stop working. Ninety days on the workmanship, and the part carries whatever the maker gives it, both written down.
Say whether the gate to the entry court is shut and whether anyone is inside the court, because that decides which lock is opened first. Give the street number and say what it is mounted on, since on these houses the number often sits on the wall rather than the door. If a lock is waiting in a box, have the model name to hand.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Fairgrove
The lock I ordered will not fit my 1961 front door. Is that the lock or the door?+
Neither, strictly. It is the gap between them. Doors of this tract were bored narrower than the size every current lock is built around, and the backset is often different as well. The fix is to bring the door up to the size the lock expects, which takes tools rather than force, and then fit the lock. Same visit, quoted as one figure between $199 and $495 depending on how much the door needs.
Which door do you need first, the gate or the house?+
Whichever one is between you and the inside. Tell us on the call and the van is loaded for it. A latched entry gate is opened without damage to the gate or the post; the house door behind it is then dealt with on the same visit at no second call charge, because the $89 is counted once.
Can a keypad go on the entry gate instead of the front door?+
Often it is the better place for one, since the gate is what visitors and deliveries actually meet. The condition is that it must be a unit built to live outdoors, and it needs a mechanical key kept as a fallback. If the gate post has shifted, that is corrected before anything is mounted, because a code cannot hold a gate that no longer lines up.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say the year the house was built, and the rest of the call is short
Cupertino and the west valley, every hour of the day. The age of the door decides the work and the work decides the figure, so the number comes back on the call with the $89 service call and the hour already inside it, and it is the number on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.