Parktown: a sixties tract where the frames have settled and the bolt now catches the edge of its hole

Sixty years of ground movement is the thing that brings most calls off these streets, and it does not announce itself. A door that used to swing shut and lock with one hand now needs a hip against it, then a shove, then a lift of the handle, and the household adapts so gradually that nobody registers it as a fault. What is happening is simple: the frame has moved a quarter inch, so the bolt no longer drops into the middle of its hole and lands on the edge of the plate instead. Forcing it works for a year or two, and then something gives, usually the strike screws or the bolt itself. Moving a strike and squaring the leaf is an hour of work and it is the cheapest visit on this page. If the bolt itself is worn or bent, replacement hardware is $126–$338.

Every house on this tract has a second entry that most households would struggle to date their last use of: the service door in the side wall of the garage, facing the fence, in full sun from noon onward. Its cylinder has been baking out there since the tract was new and there is a fair chance nothing has ever been done to it. So the key drags, then wants jiggling, then wants two hands, and eventually somebody decides the lock is broken. Nearly always it is dry pins and a lifetime of dust instead. Cleaning it, servicing it and pinning it to run on the same key as the front entry is $30–$47 per cylinder, and it is money best spent before the evening the powered door refuses to lift and that side entry turns out to be the only way in. The motor, the springs, the cables and the panels of the big door are a different trade, and you hear that on the phone rather than after a call-out.

The other door people forget is the slider at the back. On a tract of this age the original patio slider runs on worn rollers with a latch that hooks rather than bolts, and a door that will not roll properly cannot latch properly. There is no honest way to price that sight unseen, which is why the range is a range: a new latch and a keeper that lines up sits near the bottom of $126–$338 and a full replacement of the hardware sits near the top. If a door on this property has been forced, the repair is one visit and $172–$455 covers the jamb back through to the stud, a strike with long screws into framing, a fresh cylinder and a bolt that reaches again, with each part on its own line for whoever files the claim.

Two cars to a house and a wide apron in front of each means a real share of the work here happens on concrete rather than at a door. A key that went into a coat pocket and then into the trunk. A remote that survived four winters and then simply stopped being answered. An older car carrying exactly one key, because the dealer's price for a second was easy to keep putting off. Opening a car is $106–$199, programming a remote where it sits is $94–$199, cutting and coding a key once the last one is gone is $156–$429, ignition work is $186–$468, and a motorcycle under a cover beside the garage is $126–$295. The distance between the second and third of those figures is the whole argument for making the spare on a Saturday afternoon.