Lock Replacement & Installation in Milpitas
$126–$338. Deadbolts, knob sets and levers, including the first real deadbolt on a house that has run its whole life on a knob latch. On a leaf that has dropped, the hinges and the strike come back into line first, because new hardware on a crooked door fails the same way the old hardware did. Gate latches and garage service doors count as doors here and get the same treatment.
4.9 / 5· 207 reviews from Milpitas and the north end of the valley
$126–$338
Typical price
18 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
Two jobs live on this page. One is straight replacement, where a cylinder or a whole lock has gone past the point where fresh pins help. The other is putting a deadbolt on a door that has never had one, which across the tracts on this side of the valley comes up more often than owners expect.
Those front doors were hung with a knob set and nothing over it: a single cylinder and a latch reaching about half an inch. Plenty of them are still exactly that today. On the newer houses the front door carries a proper deadbolt while the service door from the garage into the house carries a passage latch, which quietly leaves the weakest lock on the property behind the one door that opens from a remote in a car. Either job is a short visit, and either one changes the arithmetic at that door more than anything else sold on this site.
Hardware the complex owns is its own case. Where a cylinder in a mailbox block, a storage cage or a walk-in gate has gone past saving, the replacement is picked on size, cam and tailpiece so it seats in the preparation that is already cut and the plate returns flat. Nothing electrical on a gate is disturbed and the complex keeps whatever key convention it has been running on. Where the door belongs to everybody, who orders the work is worked out on the call between you and the building.
Measuring comes before buying, because a door of that generation agrees with very little. Some of them are thin. The backset can be two and three eighths where a new lock expects two and three quarters. The cross bore is frequently narrower than the two and one eighth inches that current hardware is machined for. Where a bore has to be opened out or a door plated, that part is done first and shown to you before a screw is turned.
Saying that replacement is the wrong answer is part of the work. A key that has started needing a shoulder is often a cylinder wanting a strip and a clean, or a strike that has crept as the frame settled. Both belong to a visit rather than to a purchase. The test costs ten seconds and you can run it yourself: swing the door wide open and turn the key. Still fighting you with the door open, and the cylinder is the problem. Turning sweetly open but binding the moment the door is shut, and the lock is healthy while the frame has moved, which is the single most common thing wrong with doors in these tracts.
Fitted, with the hardware, this runs $126 to $338 including the service call. A cylinder dropped into a preparation that already suits it is $126. A full deadbolt on an old door that needs boring or plating, a handleset, or two doors on one stop climbs toward $338. From eight in the evening that $126 job is $174, and from midnight to seven it is $212. The make, the grade and the finish are named while the old lock is still screwed to the door, keys are cut at the van, and whatever came off stays with you unless you ask for it to be taken. Ninety days on the workmanship.
“Sixties house here, and for most of a year the front door needed a hip against it before the deadbolt would turn. My wife couldn't lock it at all, which is how it finally became a job instead of a habit. $284 for the front door and the garage service door together — the outfit I rang first wanted $430. The work was not what I expected: the locksmith spent the first twenty minutes on the door rather than the lock, shimmed the top hinge, moved the strike plate down and over and ran long screws through it into the framing instead of the trim, and only then fitted the new deadbolt. It drops now with two fingers and no shoulder! He also replaced the lock on the garage service door, which is the door I had genuinely forgotten was a door, and put both of them on one key so there is one less thing on the ring.”
All sixteen jobs are printed here, fourteen with ranges and two quoted once the doors have been walked. What moves a figure inside its range is which lock on the way in stopped you and how long that lock has stood unused. A front door somebody opens twice a day takes the low end. A gate latch nobody has walked through since the complex opened is dry, full of grit and often will not take the key that was cut for it, and that takes the time it is owed. Say which one stopped you and the range closes to a single figure.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$48
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$86
FAQ
Lock Replacement & Installation: quick answers
Our front door has had the same knob since the house was built and no deadbolt at all.+
That is the one thing on this site worth saying twice. A knob latch bites about half an inch into trim. A deadbolt reaches a full inch into a box strike anchored in the stud, which is a different proposition altogether. Fitted, including boring the door if it has never been bored, it falls inside $126 to $338. The door in from the garage deserves the same conversation on the same visit.
I have to put my shoulder behind the key before it goes around. Does the lock need replacing?+
Possibly not, and the test is free. Swing the door wide and turn the key. Resistance with the door open points at a cylinder that is dirty or worn, which may want nothing more than a clean and fresh pins. A key that turns sweetly open and binds once the door is shut says the lock is fine and the frame has settled, and that is an adjustment inside a visit.
The cylinder in our mailbox block is finished. Can it be changed without touching the rest?+
Usually it can. A cylinder matched on size, cam and tailpiece drops into the preparation that is already there, and the block, the frame and anything electrical beside it stay as they were. Keys are cut there and then for whoever the complex says should hold them. Who places that order is closed on the call, between you and the building, before a van is sent.
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Open 24 hours, 7 days
Name the door, and say who else has a key for it
Milpitas, at any hour, every day of the year. A front door in the tracts, a gate at a complex, a garage service door, a storefront in Midtown or a car in the mall lot — that decides the work, and the work decides the figure. The figure comes back on the same call with the $89 call-out and the clock already inside it, and it is the figure on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing. The van is already on this side of the interchange.