That lock was built to be taken apart.

It has to come off the door to be worked on, and then it usually goes back on. A cast bronze mortise body is a serviceable machine: the cover unscrews, the levers and springs lift out, and what has stopped it is nearly always hardened grease, grit that came in through the keyhole, and dust from the last few coats of paint. Washed, re-sprung and greased, the same body drops back into the same mortise and turns better than it has in a decade. That work is billed in the $119 to $315 line. Replacement comes up only when the case has cracked through or a part exists nowhere, and you are shown the reason before anything gets ordered.

Paint, almost every time. A leaf downtown or on the Alhambra Heights slope has been recoated every few years for a hundred years, and each coat narrows the gap it closes into. The bolt leaves the lock exactly as it was designed to and then meets a ridge of enamel rather than dropping through the keeper. The repair is a scraper, a solvent and some patience on the stop, the keeper mortise and sometimes the keyway itself, plus moving the keeper where the leaf has settled since it was fixed. It happens on the same trip and inside the same figure, and it is the cheapest thing that door will need all year.

The clock starts near Main Street and the citywide average is eighteen minutes. Downtown Martinez runs about 10, the waterfront and marina 13, Alhambra Heights 15, Muir Station 17, Vine Hill 19, Morello Park 21, Alhambra Hills 24 with the longer driveways, and Virginia Hills 27 at the south edge where the road loops around. Outside the city the same price list applies: Pacheco about 14, Pleasant Hill 18, Concord 21, Lafayette 24, Benicia 26 across the bridge, Hercules 29. When your address is one of the slow ones you get the slow number while you are still on the phone.

No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling nostalgia. An old bronze body is worth keeping for three real reasons: it can be repaired, it fits a mortise nothing modern matches, and it was made better than most of what sits on a shelf today. Resistance is a separate question, and a lever lock with a keyhole is not a modern cylinder. On a front door in plain view of the street, a rebuilt body with its keeper anchored into framing is a sound arrangement. On a back door, a side door, a shop door or an office door, current metal goes on and gets recommended out loud. Both can still end up on one key.

Often, and it does not start at a hardware counter, since nobody stocks that blank. The body comes out of the door and gets opened, the levers are read, and a key is cut and filed to what is actually inside rather than to a code in a book. Where the blank has genuinely stopped existing, the choice is between fitting a modern case into the old mortise, which keeps the knob and the plate you have, or converting that leaf to a cylinder. You get told which of the three you are in, and what each one costs, before anything comes off the door.

Three things, and none of them is the brand. What is actually hanging on the leaf, since a rebuilt bronze body, a seventies rim bolt and a keypad are three different afternoons. How much paint has to come out before a bolt can reach anything, which on some doors is the bulk of the visit. And the hour, because an arrival after 8pm carries $45 and after midnight $85. Once those three are settled on the phone, the range collapses to one figure, and that figure is what the card sees.

A Saturday costs what a Tuesday costs, and so does the Fourth of July. The only thing that shifts a figure is the hour on the clock: $45 added for an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $85 between midnight and 7am. Both are inside the number quoted before you agree to anything, so nothing new appears once the door is open. A $140 house lockout in daylight is quoted at $185 late in the evening and $225 in the small hours, and those are the numbers on the receipt.

Four things in this order. Reset any keypad code, which takes two minutes and costs nothing, because the code you were handed has been read by more people than you can list. Retire the metal keys with a rekey at $27 to $44 a cylinder and bring the outside doors onto one blade while the van is already at the curb. Then count the locks on the front door, because an old house in this town commonly carries two or three on separate keys and at least one of those keys is missing. Last, close every exterior door without holding it and try to lock it. Any door that needs a shove first is a paint and keeper job, not a purchase.

Being let back into the home you pay rent on is yours to arrange, and nobody phones the owner about it. Bring photo ID showing that address, or ID plus something on your phone that ties you to the unit, such as a lease page, a rent receipt or mail with your name on it. Changing what is on the door is the owner's decision instead: a rekey, a new deadbolt or a keypad needs a yes from the landlord or the manager, and getting that yes before the van is dispatched saves everybody a trip that cannot legally begin. Muir Station and the streets around the old center hold most of the rented housing here, so this comes up most weeks. A receipt can be made out to you, to the owner, or to both at once.

All of it. Aluminum shopfronts and the offices over them around Main Street and the courthouse. Exit devices on kitchen and cafe back doors, usually with an inspection date driving the schedule. Master systems for a floor of offices where the tenant list has changed twice. Gates, boat sheds and man-doors along the waterfront and the tracks, where salt finishes plated hardware in a season and stainless is worth the difference. The plants east of town are the biggest employers around here and their gatehouses never shut, so early starts and late finishes are ordinary bookings rather than favors. Distance outside the city buys a longer wait and nothing else.