Cupertino neighborhood · 24/7
Rancho Rinconada: 1,562 houses built between 1950 and 1953, and most of them still wear the knob set they were sold with
The flat grid that Stern and Price laid out between 1950 and 1953: 1,562 houses of eight hundred to a thousand square feet, poured on slab with no crawl space under them, an open carport instead of a garage, a wide picture window at the front, and a front door that has been repainted every decade since. About thirteen minutes from the van.
~13 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
No other part of Cupertino has this much original hardware still in daily use. The knob set on a Rancho Rinconada front door is very often the one the first owner was handed at closing, sometimes with a deadbolt screwed in above it during the seventies and sometimes with nothing above it at all. Age by itself is not a fault. A set from 1951 was machined out of solid brass and will outlast most of what a store would sell to replace it, so the first thing looked at is whether the cylinder can simply be repinned. That is $29 to $47 per cylinder, every cylinder after the first at the low end because the van is already in the driveway, and it retires every key anyone has ever been handed.
What brings people to this page, though, is usually the opposite errand. Everything else in the house has already updated itself. The thermostat learned the schedule, the doorbell started recording, the opener took a firmware update overnight, the lights answer to a phone. None of that needed anybody to visit. Then a keypad deadbolt arrives in a box and meets a door from 1951, and it does not go on. The hole bored for that original knob is often an inch and a half across where a modern lock wants two and one eighth. The backset can be two and three eighths where the lock ships set for two and three quarters. And after seventy years on three hinges the leaf has settled far enough that the bolt no longer meets the middle of the strike.
That is a door job before it is a lock job, and it is quoted that way. Smart lock installation runs $199 to $495 here, and the spread inside that range is the condition of the door rather than the badge on the lock. A leaf that still hangs true, a bore already at the modern size, a strike in solid framing: low end. A settled leaf and a narrow old bore that has to be opened up and squared: high end. It is one visit either way. The door is made right first, the lock goes on second, and both are done before anyone leaves.
The carport changes the shape of a lockout out here. There is no roll-up door to be caught behind, so the second way in is the door from the carport into the kitchen or the gate down the side of the lot, and one of those two is usually what people try before calling. A house lockout is $135 to $245 with the $89 service call already inside it. Between eight at night and midnight add $55, and after midnight $95, said on the call before you agree to anything. Ninety days on the workmanship, written on the receipt.
Give the cross street, and say what the front door carries: a keyhole in the middle of the knob, a separate deadbolt above it, or a keypad. If it is a keypad, say whether the pad lights up at all when touched. If a smart lock is waiting in its box, say the year the house was built and it can be told on the phone whether the door needs work first.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Rancho Rinconada
The keypad on our front door went dead in the night and the metal key from the box was never cut.+
Common on these streets, and it is the reason we cut and pin that backup key at the moment the lock is fitted rather than leaving it loose in a drawer. Tonight it is a house lockout at $135 to $245, with the overnight $95 inside the figure you hear before we set off. Once the door is open, the spare gets cut on the van so the same night does not happen twice.
Our front door still has the lock it came with in 1952. Should it be replaced?+
Usually not. Those cylinders were made better than their price today would suggest, and repinning one at $29 to $47 retires every key in circulation while keeping the lock on the door. What is worth changing is the strike, which on a house of this era is often screwed into the door casing rather than into framing. That part is done during the same visit.
Why is a smart lock quoted from $199 to $495 when the box on the shelf costs a fraction of that?+
Because the box is priced for a door that does not exist here. The published range covers what the door needs before the lock will sit and work: opening a narrow bore to the modern size, correcting a backset, planing or rehanging a leaf that has dropped, moving a strike into framing. On a door that is already square and already bored to size, you pay the low end.
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.