Lock Replacement & Installation in Martinez
$119 to $315. This line also pays for the job that comes up most in the old center: the bronze body out of the edge of the leaf, stripped, re-sprung, greased and put back where it was. Where new hardware is the honest answer, the leaf is checked and the keeper reset before a single screw goes in.
$119–$315
Typical price
18 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
Three jobs sit on this page, and in Martinez they arrive in an order most people do not expect. First is a rebuild: the bronze case comes out, is opened, cleaned and put back together, and that alone settles a great many of the doors reported as broken. Second is a retrofit: the same case bored for a modern mortise cylinder, so the door keeps the hardware it was built with and gains a key that controls something. Third is straight replacement, for a lock that has genuinely worn out or a door that never carried a bolt at all.
The rebuild comes first because it is usually the right answer. A century in a door leaves a case packed with dried grease, sawdust and paint dust, and paint has often crept under the escutcheon and down into the keyhole itself. On the bench the cover plate comes off, everything is stripped and cleaned, tired springs are swapped from stock, the levers are looked over for wear, and the case goes back into a pocket that has been cleared and squared. A key that wanted two hands in the morning turns with two fingers by the afternoon, and it costs less than any hardware anybody would have sold you.
When something new does go on, the door is measured first, because on leaves this old nothing can be taken for granted. Thickness varies. Backsets are not what a carton expects. Most of all, a door prepared for a mortise case carries a rectangular pocket in its edge and no bore through its face at all, and that is the detail that ends most weekend projects: a modern tubular deadbolt wants two and one eighth inches through the face and an inch into the edge, and it cannot go where the case was. Filling a pocket, letting in new stock and boring the leaf is carpentry, and it is quoted as carpentry before a screwdriver is picked up.
Saying that a replacement is not needed is part of the job. A key that has started to need force is often a case wanting a strip and a clean, a strike that has crept and can be moved a few millimeters, or paint standing proud on the stop. Ten seconds settles which. Open the door wide and turn the key. Still fighting you means the lock. Turning sweetly with the door open and jamming once it is shut means the lock is healthy and either the frame or the paint has moved.
A cylinder dropped into a preparation that already suits it is $129. The range with hardware is $119 to $315, and the upper part of it is a case bored for a modern cylinder, a first deadbolt on a door that has never had one, an edge let in with new stock, or two doors done in one stop. The $89 call-out is inside all of it. You hear the maker, the grade and the finish before a screwdriver goes near the old lock, keys are cut at the curb, and whatever comes off stays with you unless you would rather it went in the truck. Ninety days on the labor.
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 what is actually in the door: a cast mortise case that comes apart, cleans up and goes back in takes the low end, while a case seized with a century of paint, or one that has to be replaced because a part inside it is broken beyond repair, takes the high one. Say what the key does when you turn it, and the range closes to a single number on the call.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$45
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$85
FAQ
Lock Replacement & Installation: quick answers
The knob turns and nothing moves. Is the lock finished?+
Probably not. On a mortise set that is nearly always the square spindle worn round at its corners or the set screw backed out of the knob, and both are small parts fitted at the door. If the follower inside the case has failed instead, the case comes out and goes on the bench, and the worn part is in your hand before anything is ordered.
Can a normal deadbolt go where the old lock is?+
Not without work on the leaf. A mortise case sits in a rectangular pocket cut into the edge, while a tubular deadbolt wants a round bore through the face that no such door has ever had. Either the pocket is filled, new stock is let into the edge and the leaf is bored, or a deadbolt goes above the case and the case stays put. Both come with a figure and a reason before the old lock comes off.
It takes two hands to turn the key now. Does that mean new hardware?+
Not necessarily, and ten seconds tells you. Swing the door wide and turn the key. If it still resists, the lock is dirty or worn and may want no more than a clean. If it turns easily with the door open and binds the moment it is shut, the lock is fine and either the strike has drifted or paint has built on the stop, and both are adjustments inside a visit.
Related
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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.