Daly City · Westlake · Serramonte · 24 hours
Nobody here comes in through the front door.
The front door is up an outside half-flight of steps and gets used when guests come. The door that gets used is the one at the pavement, into the garage under the living floor — same place, same height, same prep, on street after street of houses built to one plan between 1948 and 1962.
Someone picks up at any hour · the $89 visit is already counted into the number you hear.
4.9 / 5214 reviewsDaly City & the coastside
Three ages of house, and what is standing on the door
- 1948–62Westlake — about 1,350 acres bought by one builder, near enough 11,000 houses across two counties on a single planTwo doors, and only one of them works for a living. The front door sits at the top of the outside steps and still carries most of what it was hung with, barely worn at seventy. The door at the pavement — the one inside the garage, or the narrow one beside the garage opening — takes every arrival, every trash night and the last turn of the key before bed. That is the cylinder that is tired, and on most of these houses it is the one that has never been changed.
- from 1963Serramonte — the Gellert tract, a later plan on the wider ground east of the hillA generation of hardware further on. A cylindrical knob set with a deadbolt above it, because by then the deadbolt was sold separately and most households bought one, and bores cut to the size a modern lock expects. The hardware is the easy part here. The awkward part is the door between the garage and the hallway, often an interior-grade slab doing an exterior job, which swells and shrinks with the weather until the bolt stops finding the hole.
- before 1940Vista Grande and Top of the Hill — the older part of the city, smaller lots, shops and flats on the same blockMortise locks in narrow stiles, a surface bolt screwed on in some later decade, and doors that open straight onto the sidewalk with no half-flight in front of them. The frames have all moved, because there is no flat ground here to move on. A good share of what gets called in as a lock problem on these streets is a strike sitting an eighth of an inch out of line.
A lock is rated in cycles, and the number on the box assumes a front door. Across most of this city the traffic is not at the front door: the car pulls into the garage at street level and everybody walks up into the house from inside it, so the lower cylinder does four and five times the work of the one at the top of the steps. Put a mile of ocean air on top of that and the hardest-working lock in the house is also standing in the worst spot for it. That is why the first question on the call is which door rather than which brand. Every figure on this page carries the $89 call-out inside it, and if the hour adds anything you hear it while you are still on the phone.
What we do
Sixteen jobs, and most of them start at the pavement
A garage door up and the door behind it shut, a key that needs wiggling after ten winters of fog, a downstairs unit whose tenant changed last week, a car locked at the BART lot with the fob on the seat, a shop door on Mission Street that stopped throwing its bolt, a safe in the garage whose combination left with the previous owner. Choose the work below and its range is printed here. Say which door and how the key feels, and the range comes back as one number.
from $105Emergency
Openings at any hour, and the frame put back in line before anyone leaves
- House Lockout$129–$239
- Car Lockout$105–$199
- Business Lockout$139–$259
- Post Break-In Lock Repair$169–$449
from $29/cylResidential
Rekeys, deadbolts, keypads and safes for houses where the busy door is the low one
- Lock Rekeying$29–$46 per cylinder
- Lock Replacement & Installation$125–$329
- Smart Lock Installation$189–$479
- Safe Opening$199–$539
from $159Commercial
Storefronts, suites and small units, counted on site and quoted door by door
- Master Key Systemscustom quote
- Panic Bars & Exit Devices$299–$779
- Access Controlcustom quote
- Storefront Door Locks$159–$469
from $95Automotive
Keys, fobs and ignitions done in the space the car is already standing in
- Car Key Replacement$155–$419
- Key Fob Programming$95–$199
- Ignition Repair$185–$459
- Motorcycle Keys$125–$289
Prices
Every range we publish, and what settles it on the call
Sixteen jobs, fourteen of them with a range and two quoted once the openings have been counted on site. What moves a figure inside its range here is which door you mean and what the salt has done to it: a cylinder still turning cleanly takes the low end, a plug pitted by years of fog takes the high one. Say which door and how the key feels, and the range closes to a single number on the call.
Emergency
from $105
Residential
from $29/cyl
Commercial
from $159
We quote the smallest thing that actually fixes it. A cylinder that has been fighting the key usually wants stripping and repinning, not replacing. A door that has settled wants its hinge screws and its strike put back in line, not new hardware bolted over the problem. Five doors that all want one key are a single rekey. Say the year the house was built and what stopped you when you call (650) 977-1855.
On every job
The Door at the Pavement
Four things that hold the same way on a garage door in Westlake, a hallway door in Serramonte, a shop front on Mission Street and a converted garage with its own tenants. Ninety days on the labor, written on the receipt instead of implied.
- 1The lower door is priced as the door you actually useOn a split-level built to the Westlake plan the front door is ceremonial. The car goes in at street level, the household walks up into the house from inside the garage, and that lower door is opened four and five times a day for sixty years while the one at the top of the steps waits for visitors. Wear follows use, so the tired cylinder, the loose knob, the latch that has to be lifted are all down at the pavement. Say which door on the call and the whole conversation gets shorter. If only one lock in the house is going to be replaced this year, it is that one.
- 2One number, with the hour already in itThe figure covers the visit, the labor and the parts, and the $89 call-out is part of it rather than a second line underneath. A van arriving between 8pm and midnight carries $50, and between midnight and 7am $90, and you hear either one while you are still on the phone. What turns up behind the escutcheon does not reopen the arithmetic: a cylinder older than the paperwork claimed, a strike screwed into trim, a slab that has swollen half an inch since the last dry week.
- 3A mile from the ocean the finish is named out loudFog and wind come off the water all year, and the lower door meets them head on every time the garage goes up. Chloride settles in the keyway and works on the pins, the springs and the walls of the plug, so the first sign is not failure but a key that needs a lift and a wiggle. The honest answer at that point is not more lubricant. It is knowing which part is going back on the door: a satin chrome deadbolt, BHMA 626, is finished for an interior door and is sold for outside ones every day of the week. On this side of the hill the part worth fitting is 630, stainless. That gets said with the old lock still in your hand.
- 4A garage that became a flat gets its own key planThe city allows the space under the house to be turned into a separate home and does not ask for parking back in exchange, which turns the lower door into a second front door with its own tenants and its own turnover. That needs deciding rather than improvising: a deadbolt on the unit that the household key does not open, one key for the owner that opens both if that is what you want, and a written note of which key opens what so the next change of tenant is one cylinder and not an afternoon. Ninety days on the labor either way, and the part carries the maker's own term.
Reviews
What people say after the lower door was opened
Garage-level doors opened, seventy-year-old knob sets repinned, a converted downstairs unit keyed apart from the house, a car opened at the BART lot, from the Westlake grid out to the yards at Bayshore, each with the number that ended up on the card.
4.9/ 5214reviews
Daly City & the coastside
“I came in from the car with both arms full and the door from the garage into the house pulled shut behind me, keys upstairs on the counter. Half past eight in the evening, so I stood in my own garage with the roller door up and the fog coming in. $205 on the call with the $50 evening already inside it, and $205 on the card. Thirteen minutes. He picked it open, then showed me the latch was worn to a slope and said that door gets opened more times in a week than our front door does in a year, which I had never once thought about.”
“We finished the conversion downstairs and had a mess of keys: the garage side door, the new unit door, the door up into the hallway and the front. Four cylinders at $34 each with the $89 visit inside, $225 total. Our tenant's key opens the unit and nothing else, ours opens all four, and he wrote out which key does what on the receipt so I have it in writing when somebody moves out. He also swapped the hallway door onto the same key without charging me for a fifth cylinder we did not need.”
“The deadbolt on the door at the bottom of the steps had been needing a lift and a jiggle for about two years, and this winter it stopped answering at all. He took it off and showed me the inside of the plug, which was pitted like a piece of the seawall. $268, quoted and charged. What was useful was the part where he explained the finish: what I had bought last time was rated for indoors, and out here on the bluff we are close enough to the water that it was never going to last. The stainless one has been through a whole wet season and still turns with one finger.”
“Our door opens straight onto the sidewalk on Mission and it had stopped locking properly, which you cannot leave for a week. $385 for a new deadlatch, a cylinder and the closer set right. The first thing he did was check the frame rather than the lock, because he said on this hill the buildings keep moving and the bolt stops meeting the keeper long before the lock ever fails. He worked after we closed and never mentioned the hour. Figure on the phone, same figure on the card.”
“Last key to the car disappeared somewhere between the mall and the house, and the dealer wanted it towed in plus four days. He came out to the space I was parked in, checked my license against the registration and the plate, and cut and coded a key and a spare with the car sitting where it was. $310 for both. Four rather than five because the wait ran nearer thirty-five minutes than the twenty-four I was given, though he did call twice to say where he was. The work itself was quick and he made me start it twice before he packed up.”
“We wanted a code on the door we actually use, which is the one inside the garage, not the front door up the steps that nobody has opened since Christmas. $355. He fitted it to the lower door, set the codes with me standing there, and cut the override key at the van instead of leaving me the blank in the packet, which he said matters more up here where the wind comes over the ridge and batteries go flat in the cold without warning. He also moved the strike a fraction because the door had been closing hard on it.”
Why us
The door you use is not the door you show.
The busy door is treated as the main door
Most of this trade quotes a house as though the front door were the whole story. On streets laid to the Westlake plan that is the door with the least wear in the building. The work sits at pavement level: the service door inside the single-car garage, the narrow door beside the garage opening, the leaf between the garage and the hallway. Those are the locks that fail, and they are the ones the van is loaded for.
Stock for the two things this city does to hardware
Use and salt. That means knob sets and deadbolts sized for the bores in the 1948 to 1962 houses, stainless BHMA 630 cylinders and bolts for the coastal streets rather than the interior-rated finish sold everywhere, long strikes and jamb reinforcement for doors that have moved on the slope, keypad deadbolts with a machine on board to cut the override key, aluminum deadlatches and hookbolts for the storefronts on Mission Street and in the centers, exit devices, readers, and blanks and programmers for most of what is parked at the curb.
Eighteen minutes across eight neighborhoods, and the slow ones named as slow
There is no shop and no counter, because the lock is bolted to your door and cannot be carried to one. From the van near the Westlake center: Westlake about 12 minutes, St. Francis Heights 14, Westlake Knolls 15, Vista Grande 16, Top of the Hill 18, Westlake Palisades 21, Serramonte 24, Bayshore 26. The average is 18. Where a run is genuinely longer it gets said on the phone instead of discovered afterward.
Ninety days printed on the receipt, and a cut key rather than a blank
Ninety days on the labor, printed on the receipt rather than implied, with the maker standing behind the part. The receipt is itemized and lands in your email, and a written description of the work goes to an owner, a manager or an insurer whenever one is needed. Where a lock has an override cylinder you finish the visit holding a cut metal key for it, not a blank still in its packet.
How it works
From the door at the kerb to a key that turns
- 1
Say which door
Front door at the top of the outside steps, the service door inside the garage, the narrow door beside the garage opening, the leaf between the garage and the hallway, a converted unit downstairs, a shop front, or a car. Then the neighborhood and what the key is doing: stiff, halfway, snapped, or perfectly fine on the wrong side of a door that shut behind you.
- 2
Hear one number with the hour in it
The visit, the labor and the parts arrive as a single figure with the $89 call-out inside it and the clock counted in, $50 from 8pm and $90 after midnight. If what you are describing turns out to be a garage door spring or an opener motor, you hear that now rather than after somebody has made the drive. You answer yes or no with the number already in front of you.
- 3
The door is squared up, then the lock goes on
A text names the technician and gives an arrival window drawn from where the van actually is. At the door, ID is matched to the address or a registration and a plate to each other before a case is opened. Then the leaf, the hinges and the strike are put back in line, the lock goes on, and you try it yourself before anything is packed away. Card or tap on the spot, itemized receipt by email, ninety days on the labor.
Coverage
Every part of Daly City, and the towns beside it
Average arrival 18 minutes across Daly City, from twelve in Westlake to twenty-six out at Bayshore, and longer to Broadmoor, Colma, Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno and Pacifica. Every area page carries its own minute.
Daly City neighborhoods
Down the Peninsula and over the ridge
Free estimate
Four questions, then the same range this site publishes.
Not an emergency? Answer four questions and the published range for that work comes back on the screen, with nothing held behind a phone call. If it is urgent, the form steps aside and hands you the number.
- 1What went wrong?A lockout, a key, a lock change, or something else entirely.
- 2Where is the door?A house, an apartment, a car or a business.
- 3How soon?If it is right now, the form gets out of the way and you call.
- 4Where does the range go?A name and a number. Email and cross street only if you like.
Before you call anyone
Five questions worth asking while the phone is still in your hand
The first screen of results for a locksmith in this city is mostly not in this city. Dispatch desks several states away buy the ads, take your address, advertise a price in the twenties and hand the job to whoever picks up, and the number at the end has nothing to do with the number at the start — usually after a cylinder was drilled that would have picked in four minutes. The five questions below take about a minute between them, and somebody working straight gets through all five without slowing down.
- 1Ask for a single number with the $89 call-out and the hour of the night already inside it. "Starting at" is not a number, it is a space left blank until somebody is standing in your driveway.
- 2Ask them which door you have. Anybody quoting a house in Westlake without wanting to know whether you mean the front door at the top of the steps or the one at the pavement has not pictured your house at all.
- 3Ask what finish they intend to put on an exterior door a mile from the water. Someone who cannot say the grade out loud is about to sell you an indoor part for an outdoor job.
- 4Ask which tools come out before a drill does, and what hardware goes on if the drill wins anyway. An answer that opens with drilling is an answer about their schedule, not about your lock.
- 5Say no to cash only. A landlord, an insurer, a property manager or your own file all want an itemized receipt with a business name on it, and a number written on a torn-off slip satisfies none of them.
FAQ
The questions an old door raises
Which door do you mean when you ask which door?+
On the houses built between 1948 and 1962 there are two ways into the same home. The front door is at the top of an outside half-flight of steps and is opened for guests. The other one is at pavement level: either the service door inside the single-car garage or the narrow door beside the garage opening, and that is the one the household uses every day. They usually have different locks, different keys and completely different amounts of wear, so telling us which one you are standing at is worth more than any other detail on the call. It decides the parts on the van, the tools that come out first and often the figure itself.
How long is the wait, and does the neighborhood change it?+
Eighteen minutes is the average across the city, measured from the van near the Westlake center on John Daly Boulevard. Westlake runs about 12, St. Francis Heights 14, Westlake Knolls 15, Vista Grande 16, Top of the Hill 18, Westlake Palisades 21, Serramonte 24, and Bayshore 26 out toward Geneva Avenue. Broadmoor, Colma, Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno and Pacifica run longer than any of those, out to around 35 minutes at the far end, since Pacifica means crossing the ridge on Highway 1 and Brisbane means going round through Bayshore. Where the wait is longer you hear the longer number on the phone rather than after half an hour of watching the street.
Why does the lower door wear out when the front door still feels new?+
Because one of them is working and the other one is not. A lock is rated in cycles and the rating quietly assumes a front door with a few openings a day. On the plan these streets were built to, the car goes into the garage, the household walks up into the house from inside it, groceries and laundry and school bags all come through the same leaf, and it is the last thing locked at night. The door at the top of the steps might see a dozen openings a month. So a sixty-year-old cylinder at the top can be in fine order while its twin at the bottom is worn through, and replacing the front one first is spending money in the wrong place.
My key has gone stiff and needs a wiggle. Is that the lock or the weather?+
Around here it is usually the weather, and the test takes ten seconds. Open the door, then turn the key with the door standing open. If it is still stiff, the trouble is inside the cylinder. Chloride comes in off the water and settles in the keyway, and it works on the pins, the springs and the walls of the plug, where the whole working clearance is a fraction of a millimeter. Stiffness is the first stage, not the last. If instead the key turns freely with the door open and only fights when the door is shut, the lock is fine and the bolt has stopped lining up with the strike, which on ground this steep is common. A repin is $29 to $46 per cylinder, a replacement $125 to $329, and moving a strike back into line is part of the visit.
Is a Sunday or a holiday priced differently, or only the hour on the clock?+
Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays all run at ordinary daytime figures. Only the clock changes anything: arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $50, and between midnight and 7am adds $90. Both are counted in before you say yes rather than appearing on the card afterward. A house lockout at $145 in the afternoon is quoted as $195 at ten at night and $235 at three in the morning, and every one of those figures is still inside the published $129 to $239.
We are turning the garage into a separate unit. How should the keys be arranged?+
Decide it once, on paper, before the first tenant moves in. The city permits the conversion and does not require the parking to be replaced, so what used to be your own back way into the house becomes somebody else's front door with its own turnover. In practice that means a proper deadbolt on the unit door that your household key does not open, a separate cylinder on the door from the garage up into the hallway so the two homes are genuinely separate, and one key held by the owner that opens whichever of those you want it to. Have the chart written on the receipt. Then a change of tenant is one cylinder repinned at $29 to $46 instead of a whole afternoon of guessing which key is which.
Is a stainless lock actually worth the extra on this side of town?+
Within a mile of the open water, yes, and it is the one recommendation on this site made twice. The finish grades are not marketing: BHMA 626, satin chrome, is specified for interior use, and it is what gets sold for outside doors constantly because it is cheap and it looks right in the box. BHMA 630 is stainless and it is what the coast asks for. Out on the bluff in Westlake Palisades the difference shows up in a couple of wet seasons. Further inland toward Serramonte and Bayshore it matters less and paying for it is your call rather than our recommendation. Either way the grade and the finish get said out loud while the old lock is still in your hand.
The door has started catching and will not lock without a shove. Is that a lock job?+
Often it is not, and it is worth knowing before you pay for hardware. The ground under this city runs from sea level to about 780 feet and the coastal edge is still moving at Mussel Rock, so frames shift, and a garage-to-hallway door that is really an interior slab swells and shrinks with the damp on top of that. A bolt that no longer meets its hole is a strike and hinge job: the leaf brought back to square, the hinges shimmed, the strike moved and its mortise recut. That is included in the visit rather than sold as an extra, and if a new lock genuinely is needed you will be told what it is doing and why before anything comes off the door.
We just bought here. What is worth doing in the first month?+
Three things, in this order. Rekey every exterior cylinder so the keys from the sale stop working, at $29 to $46 each, and bring the front door, the garage service door and the pedestrian door onto one key while somebody is already there. Change any keypad code you were handed, because that code has passed through an agent, a stager, a cleaner and whoever held the open house. Then look properly at the lower door, since on a house of this age it is the one carrying sixty or seventy years of daily use and it is frequently running on a knob button with no deadbolt above it. At a median around $1.11 million the house turns over faster than the hardware on it does, and the set of people holding a key at closing is longer than anybody expects.
Do you cover Broadmoor, Colma, Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno and Pacifica?+
All six, around the clock, at the same figures as Daly City. The address changes the wait and not the price. Inside the city the run is 12 to 26 minutes depending on the neighborhood, and the towns beyond it are longer than that, up to around 35 at the far end, with the real number said on the call before you commit to waiting for it. The only two things that move a figure anywhere are the door itself and the hour on the clock.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say which door you are standing at and the call gets short
Daly City and the north Peninsula, every hour of the day. The door decides the work and the work decides the number, so the figure comes back on the call with the $89 call-out and the hour already inside it, and it is the figure on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.