Lock Replacement & Installation in Daly City

Two jobs sit on this page. Straight replacement, where a lock has worn past useful repinning. And fitting a proper bolt on a door that has never carried one, which on these streets usually means the door between the garage and the house.

That second job comes out of the way the plan works. The household goes in and out through the garage, so the internal door at the top of the steps takes the same traffic as a front door while carrying a passage latch that reaches about half an inch. It is the busiest opening on the property and the lightest lock on it. On many of these houses the outside door at pavement level is the other end of the same story: it gets used dozens of times a week and has been getting used that way since the fifties.

The door is measured before anything is unscrewed, because on a plan this old nothing is assumed. Thickness, backset and cross bore are read and written down. Where the bore has to be opened out or the door plated, that happens first and is shown to you before a screw goes in. The advantage of a repeated plan is that this is quick. The prep on a Westlake Knolls door is the prep on a Vista Grande door, so the parts that suit it are usually already in the van.

Finish is worth one paragraph and not more. Within about a mile of open water, common builder hardware in BHMA 626 satin chrome is being asked to do a job it was never specified for, since 626 is an interior finish. The coastal grade is 630 satin stainless. On an exterior door in Westlake Palisades or anywhere the wind comes straight off the ocean, that is the difference between hardware you buy once and hardware you buy again. On an interior door it makes no difference at all and nobody will try to sell it to you for one.

Replacing is not always the answer, and saying so is part of the visit. Try it in ten seconds before you call. Turn the key with the door standing wide open. If it still fights you, the fault is in the cylinder. If it turns freely open and jams once the door is shut, the lock is healthy and the door is no longer meeting its strike, which on a city that runs from sea level to 780 feet is a common and much cheaper repair. That one gets moved, shimmed or recut rather than replaced.

Fitted with hardware, replacement is $125 to $329 with the $89 call-out inside it. A cylinder swapped into a bore that already suits it is $125. A full bolt on an old door needing boring or plating, a handleset, or two doors in one stop moves toward $329. Evening adds $50 and overnight adds $90. 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 away.