Martinez neighborhood · 24/7
Downtown Martinez: cast bronze locks set into the edge of the door, shopfronts under offices, and the courthouse two streets away
The old county-seat blocks around Main and Ferry: brick and timber shopfronts with offices on the floor above them, the courthouse and the legal and title firms that follow it, and front doors that carry a bronze lock buried in the edge of the leaf rather than a cylinder punched through its face. Ten minutes from the van, the shortest run on this map.
~12 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The hardware downtown is the oldest anything on this site deals with, and it is built the opposite way round from what a store sells. Take the long narrow plate off the edge of one of these doors and the whole lock slides out in one piece: a cast body, a cover held by two screws, a stack of levers on a post, coil and flat springs, a bolt, a latch, and a square hole for the spindle the knobs sit on. Every part of that comes apart on a bench, gets the dried grease of a century washed out of it, and goes back. That is why the first answer here is almost never a replacement. Cleaning and repinning a cylinder is $27 to $44, and a case that has been serviced this way generally turns better afterward than the boxed set anyone would put in its place.
Where it genuinely ends, it is said plainly. A body cracked across the bolt pocket, a lever stack worn to the point where a wrong key lifts it, a spindle hole rounded out until the knob spins free — those are replacements at $119 to $315, and on a downtown door the new hardware goes in behind the original plate so the street sees nothing different. The other honest sentence is this one: an old lock being repairable does not make it strong. Where a door needs to resist somebody rather than merely close, the answer is a modern cylinder fitted into the case or a deadbolt above it, and that gets recommended out loud rather than avoided because it spoils a story.
At street level the doors are a different century. Aluminum shopfronts with a hookbolt or a deadlatch at the handle, a closer overhead that somebody adjusted with whatever was to hand, and a frame that has been shouldered by delivery carts for decades. Storefront door locks are $152 to $449 per opening, and a fair share of those calls are a strike moved a few millimeters and a worn latch rather than a whole new set. A business lockout is $135 to $245. Back doors onto the service alley carry a bar, and an inspector who has written one up wants it latching on its own every time, which is $289 to $739 per door and often an adjustment before it is a purchase.
The offices above and around the courthouse bring the keying work. A firm on one floor wants one key for the principal, one that opens the suite alone, and one that opens nothing with files behind it, and that is a master key system quoted after the doors have been walked and counted rather than guessed at over the phone. Cars are the last of it: the lots and the curb around the court hold vehicles that stand from eight until five, so a car lockout is $99 to $189 and a fob paired at the space is $95 to $189. The $89 service call sits inside every one of those figures. Arrival between 8pm and midnight carries $45 and between midnight and 7am $85, both said on the call, and ninety days on the labor is printed on the receipt.
Give the block of Main or Ferry and say which opening it is: the shop front, a rear door onto the alley, the street door to a stair, or an office on the floor above. If the lock sits in the edge of the door under a long narrow plate rather than through the face of it, say so, because that decides what comes off the van.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Downtown Martinez
The lock in our front door is older than anyone in the building. Does it have to come off?+
Usually not. A cast case in the edge of the door was designed to be opened and serviced, and most of what stops one working is dried grease and grit rather than wear. It comes out, gets cleaned and re-sprung, and goes back, with the cylinder repinned at $27 to $44 so every key handed out before today stops working. Replacement at $119 to $315 is for a cracked body or a worn lever stack, and it is fitted behind the original plate.
Twelve minutes is the shortest figure on this site. Does it hold in the middle of a weekday?+
The drive does. What stretches it is the last part, because parking around the court fills early and the nearest legal stop can be a block from your door. That block gets walked with the case. Ten minutes is an average rather than a promise, and if the van is finishing a job up the hill when you ring, the window you are given is measured from where it is standing.
The inspector wrote up the back door of our restaurant. What actually needs doing?+
Say what the bar does now: clicks and does not hold, holds but needs a shove, or has been tied back. A device left dogged, a rod out of length or a strike knocked out of line by a cart are all adjustments, and adjustment is tried first. Where the mechanism is finished it is $289 to $739 per door, counted per door so a building with two rear exits hears two figures rather than one lump.
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.