Alameda neighborhood · 24/7
Gold Coast: big Victorian and Edwardian houses near the south shore, and property counts that run to eight cylinders
The streets of large wooden houses set back behind deep porches between Central Avenue and the south shore, many of them still one household from the front steps to the attic, with carriage houses and back cottages on the lot. Fourteen minutes from the van.
~14 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
These are the houses on the island that most often stayed whole, and that changes the arithmetic more than it changes the hardware. A rekey here is almost never two cylinders. Front door, back door off the kitchen, the door onto the porch, the basement, a side gate, the garage or carriage house, and on many lots a cottage at the rear: eight is an ordinary tally and ten is not unusual. Repinning runs $30 to $47 per cylinder, with everything after the first at the low end, and because the figure is built from the count it is worth walking the property once with a phone before you call. The $89 visit is counted once across every door on the list.
The second thing these houses carry is leftovers. Plenty of them were divided into flats at some point and put back together again decades later, and the evidence stays in the woodwork: a cylinder in an interior door at the top of the stair, a second mail slot in the front door that opens onto nothing, a bolt on a bedroom door that was once somebody's front door. None of it is a fault and none of it needs an emergency. When a house is being brought onto one key it is worth deciding, door by door, which of those old cylinders stays as a working lock, which becomes a plain handle, and which is simply left alone. That conversation costs nothing and it saves buying hardware nobody wanted.
Where a lock has genuinely worn out, replacement is $127 to $332 per door and the part is named while you are still on the phone rather than produced from the van as a surprise. On a front door that reads from the sidewalk, matching what is already there matters as much as the mechanism, so the sensible order is to keep the lock that is worth keeping, clean and repin it, and spend the money on the doors nobody photographs: the kitchen door, the basement, the gate at the side. A lockout is $132 to $242, and on a door of this age the whole point of the visit is getting in without harming a set that has been in the same wood for a century.
Two other jobs come off these blocks regularly. Houses that change hands furnished tend to come with a safe in a closet or bolted into a basement floor, and the combination left with the seller. Opening one is $198 to $529 and in most cases the safe is usable again afterward with numbers you choose. And the side gate is what actually causes the lockouts: somebody carries the recycling down the path, the latch drops behind them, and the front door is bolted from inside. Evening work from eight to midnight adds $50 and the small hours add $88, both inside the number you agree to, and the labor carries ninety days in writing.
Count the cylinders before you call, including the basement, the carriage house and every gate, since the count is the whole basis of the figure. If the front hardware is original, one photo of the face plate tells the technician what to load. Say whether the house has ever been divided, because leftover cylinders inside often turn up in the tally.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Gold Coast
There is a keyed lock on an interior door upstairs that nobody uses. What should we do with it?+
Decide rather than default. Houses on these streets were often divided and then put back, and that cylinder was somebody's front door once. It can be brought onto the house key for a few dollars as part of a rekey, swapped for a plain handle at $127 to $332, or left exactly as it is. What is not worth doing is paying to make a door secure that opens onto your own hallway.
We bought the house with the furniture and a safe nobody can open.+
Common here, and it is scheduled work rather than an emergency. Opening runs $198 to $529 depending on the make and how it is mounted, and the technician works the lock before anything else is considered. If the model needs a drill point, that is described and approved first, then repaired and reset so the safe still locks when you are done with it.
Ten cylinders sounds expensive. Is there a cheaper way to do it?+
The cheaper way is to be honest about which doors matter. Every cylinder after the first is at the low end of $30 to $47, so the count is less punishing than it looks, but a gate that stands open all summer and a basement hatch nobody has used since a remodel do not have to be on the same key as the front door. The tally is talked through on the call before it becomes a number.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say whether it is the street door or your own, and the rest of the call is short
Alameda and Bay Farm, at any hour. Which leaf it is decides who approves the work, the door itself 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, in writing.