Cupertino neighborhood · 24/7
Monta Vista at the foot of the hills: the oldest part of Cupertino, the priciest attendance zone in town, and long driveways off narrow streets
The old western edge of the city where the streets begin to climb: larger lots than anywhere else in the flat part of town, driveways that run well back from the road, prewar cottages standing next to houses rebuilt in the last five years, and a school boundary that puts the median near $3.55 million against roughly $2.8 million a street outside it. Seventeen minutes, which is exactly the citywide average.
~17 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
One block here can hold ninety years of door hardware. A cottage from the thirties with a mortise case buried in the edge of its door stands two lots from a rebuild with a tall leaf on a multipoint lock and a camera watching the porch. Nothing can be assumed on the drive over, so the call asks for the age of the house before it asks anything else. That one sentence decides whether the van needs bit-key blanks and mortise springs or a torque wrench and a gearbox, and it is the difference between one visit and two.
Houses change hands here for the boundary more than for the building, and what follows a sale is usually a remodel. That matters for locks in a way nobody mentions at the closing. Over six months a general contractor, several subcontractors, an inspector, a stager and a cleaning crew all held a key or a code, and the lock that ends up on the finished door is frequently whatever the contractor happened to have in the truck. Repinning every cylinder on the property at $29 to $47 each ends all of that in about an hour, and it is worth doing the week you move in rather than the year after.
On the rebuilt houses the front door is often a tall leaf running a multipoint lock, and that changes the smart-lock conversation completely. A multipoint is not a bore and a bolt; it is a gearbox with rods running to the head and the sill, and a keypad deadbolt cannot simply take its place. Sometimes the maker offers a matching unit and sometimes the honest answer is that the front door stays as it is and the code goes on the side door instead. You get that answer on the phone rather than after somebody has opened a box in your hallway. A gearbox that has started to bind is adjusted while adjusting is still possible, which costs a great deal less than the gearbox.
Two other things run steadily out here. Driveways are long and often unlit, so the last minute of the seventeen is spent finding a number, and a light at the road saves more time than any route. And safes turn up: a floor or wall safe left behind by a previous owner with a combination nobody wrote down. Opening one is $205 to $549, usually without harming the door of the safe, and it gets put back into working order with a combination you choose. Evening work carries $55 from eight until midnight and $95 after that, inside the figure quoted.
Say roughly when the house was built and what the front door looks like from outside: a knob with a keyhole in it, a separate deadbolt, or a tall door with a long handle you lift before turning the key. If the driveway is long, leave a light on at the road and give the nearest cross street.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Monta Vista
Seventeen minutes here and twelve in Garden Gate. Why the difference over such a short distance?+
The last part of the run, not the distance. Streets narrow as they approach the hills, driveways are long, and house numbers sit back from the road behind planting. Seventeen minutes counts the walk from wherever the van can legally stop. It is also, as it happens, the average across the whole map, so it is a fair number to plan by.
The remodel is finished. Do we rekey or replace every lock?+
Rekey, in almost every case. The hardware is new and nothing is wrong with it; what is wrong is the number of people who have held a key to it since spring. Repinning at $29 to $47 a cylinder retires all of those keys and leaves you with one you cut yourself. Replacement at $129 to $339 is for a lock that is damaged or one that was never right for the door.
Can a keypad lock go on a tall front door with a multipoint lock?+
Sometimes, and only with the part built for that system. A multipoint drives rods to the top and bottom of the door, so a standard keypad deadbolt has nothing to work with. If the maker offers a compatible unit it is fitted and set up; if not, the honest recommendation is to leave the front alone and put the code on the door people actually use every day. You hear which of the two applies before anybody drives out.
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.