Martinez neighborhood · 24/7
Alhambra Heights: the oldest doors in town, and a hundred years of paint holding them shut
The slope directly above downtown: tall wooden houses with deep porches, turned posts and bay windows, narrow lots with a flight of steps up from the sidewalk, and front doors that have been repainted every few years since the house went up. Fifteen minutes from the van.
~15 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The commonest call from these streets is not a lock at all. The bolt comes out of the door and stops a hair short of the plate, so the door has to be leaned on before the key will finish its turn, and everybody blames the lock. Take a knife along the joint and the reason shows itself: coats of paint built up on the edge of the leaf and in the rabbet the door closes against, enough to hold the leaf a couple of millimeters proud of where it was hung. The cure is paint removed from the stop and the edge, and the strike plate reset into clean wood. That is a visit rather than a purchase, and it is what gets tried before anybody talks about hardware.
Paint also decides how the lock comes out. The screws in the long plate on the edge of the door have been painted over so many times that the slots are full, and a driver put straight into one strips the head and turns a twenty-minute job into an afternoon. The line gets cut first, the slots cleaned out, and only then does anything turn. Once the case is on the bench it is opened, the grease of a century is washed out, springs and levers are checked, and the cylinder is repinned at $27 to $44 so that every key handed out before today stops working. On a house that has changed hands once or twice, that count usually runs to the front, the kitchen door, the basement door and a gate at the side.
Two honest limits belong on this page. First, a lock being worth keeping is not the same as a lock being strong, and nobody here will tell you otherwise. Where a door needs to hold against somebody rather than simply latch, a modern deadbolt goes above the old set at $119 to $315, and the bore is measured clear of the mortise pocket already cut into that stile before a drill is switched on, because there is no second chance at it. Second, where a case has cracked at the bolt it is replaced, and the new hardware sits behind the original plate so the porch reads the same from the sidewalk.
The rest of the work on this slope follows the shape of the houses. Steps up from the street, a second stair down the side to a basement door, back gardens reached only through a gate with a keyed latch, and a house lockout at $125 to $229 that starts wherever the walk stops. On a door of this vintage the whole point is getting in without harming a lock that nobody manufactures any more, so a drill only ever follows a yes and it never raises the figure. Houses that pass through an estate up here often come with a safe in a basement or a closet and no combination anywhere, and opening one is $189 to $509. Evening work carries $45 and overnight $85, counted inside the figure.
Say whether the lock sits in the edge of the door under a long narrow plate or goes through the face of it, and whether the key is flat or a long one with a single bit on the end. If the door has to be pushed or lifted before it will lock, mention that, because that is the door rather than the lock and it takes different tools.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Alhambra Heights
The key turns but the door will not lock unless I lean on it.+
That is nearly always paint. Coats on the edge of the leaf and in the rabbet it closes against hold the door a couple of millimeters out, so the bolt reaches the plate and cannot make the last of its travel. The paint comes off the stop and the edge, the strike is reset into clean wood, and the key turns with one finger again. If the bolt itself is worn short, you are told with the case out and given the figure before anything is changed.
Can a deadbolt be added above the original lock on a door like ours?+
Usually, and the measuring matters more than the drilling. The stile already holds a mortise pocket, so the new bore has to be placed clear of it and of the rail joints, which is checked before a hole exists rather than after. Fitted, that is $119 to $315. Where the stile is too narrow to take one safely, you are told that instead of being sold a lock that would weaken the door.
Is our old lock less safe than a new one?+
On resistance, a modern deadbolt is better, and there is no point pretending otherwise. What the old case has is repairability: it can be opened, cleaned, re-sprung and repinned at $27 to $44 rather than thrown away, which a boxed set cannot be. The sensible arrangement on most of these houses keeps the original working and adds a modern bolt above it.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say whether the key meets a keyhole or a cylinder, and the rest of the call is quick
Martinez and the towns around the strait, around the clock. What sits in the edge of the leaf decides the work and the work decides the number, which is settled on the phone with the $89 visit and any late hour already inside it. It reads the same on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, a rebuilt bronze case covered the same as a new lock.