Lock Replacement & Installation in Cupertino

Two jobs share this page. The first is plain replacement, where a cylinder or a whole lock has worn past useful repinning. The second is more common here than anywhere else in the area, and it is fitting a deadbolt on a door that has never carried one.

That second job comes straight out of when these houses were built. A Rancho Rinconada front door from 1952 was hung with a knob set and nothing else. Nine hundred square feet, one lock, a latch about half an inch long that a stiff shoulder can move without much argument. Many of those doors are still exactly that. On the newer streets the front door has a solid deadbolt and the door from the garage into the house has a passage latch, which makes the weakest lock on the property the one sitting behind the door that opens from a phone.

Before any of that goes on, the door itself gets measured, because on houses this old nothing can be assumed. Thickness runs thin, often an inch and three eighths on an Eichler slab. The backset may be two and three eighths where the new lock expects two and three quarters. The cross bore in a 1952 door is frequently narrower than the two and one eighth inches modern hardware is made for. Where a bore has to be opened or a door plated, that is done first and shown to you before a screw goes in. This is the promise the shop is named for: the door is made right, then the lock goes on.

Replacing is not always the answer, and saying so is part of the job. A key that has begun to need force is often a cylinder wanting a strip and a clean, or a strike that has crept and can simply be moved a few millimeters. Both are part of a visit rather than a purchase. Try it yourself in ten seconds: turn the key with the door standing wide open. If it still fights you, the cylinder is the fault. If it turns freely open and jams when shut, the lock is fine and the strike has moved.

Fitted with the hardware, replacement runs $129 to $339, the $89 visit inside. A cylinder swapped into a bore that already suits it is $129. A full deadbolt on an old door that needs boring or plating, a handleset, or two doors in one stop moves toward $339. The make, the grade and the finish are named while the old lock is still on the door, the new keys are cut at the van, and the old hardware is left with you unless you want it taken. Labor carries 90 days.