Lock Rekeying in Berkeley
Existing hardware stays, old keys stop turning, $22 to $37 per cylinder plus the $89 visit.
$22–$37 per cylinder
Typical price
19 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
Repinning is the right answer whenever a key is loose in the world and the locks themselves are sound: a shared house near Telegraph turning over four housemates in August, a landlord between tenants in January, a closing in Elmwood where the sellers cannot say how many copies exist, a co-op that has been cutting keys since the eighties. Campanile Lock & Key repins the cylinders already on your doors, so the old keys stop turning and the door looks exactly as it did the day before.
A cylinder comes out of the door, the plug is pushed through on the bench in the van, the old pin stacks are dumped and new ones are set to a fresh key. Kwikset, Schlage, Weiser, Baldwin and builder-grade hardware take a few minutes each. Mortise cylinders from Yale, Corbin and Russwin on the older houses take longer, and nearly all of them still repin cleanly. Interior skeleton-key doors are a different matter: a warded bit lock has no pin stacks to change, so those are either left as they are or fitted with a modern cylinder, and you hear which before anyone touches them. New keys are cut on site, and every old key is tried in every repinned lock so you can watch it fail.
Repinning is $22 to $37 a cylinder. A house with four cylinders comes to $88 to $148. A studio with a deadbolt and a knob is $44 to $74. The $89 service call is inside that total rather than sitting on top of it, so where the per-cylinder sum lands below $89 the figure is $89 and nothing further. Cylinders in different keyways that cannot share one key are pointed out before any work starts, with the cost of swapping the odd one quoted under lock replacement.
Count the doors on the call, or describe them and let the technician count. The per-cylinder figure is agreed there. A text names the technician and the window. On site: a check of the count, the repinning, key cutting, a test of old and new keys on every door, then card or tap. Property managers receive a receipt listing each unit and each door, which is what a turnover file usually wants.
“Pulled the door shut behind me on Ashby with the keys on the hall table and my daughter due home from school. The call gave me $145 and a thirty-minute window, and the text with the technician's name arrived a minute later. He came in sixteen minutes, had the deadbolt open in about four with a pick and a tension wrench, and the lock still works exactly as it did. $145 on the card, nothing else.”
Every job is priced from the list below. The figure is agreed on the call, before a technician touches the lock, and the receipt repeats it.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$35
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$70
FAQ
Lock Rekeying: quick answers
We rent a house off Telegraph and take over the lease on the first of September. Is it worth doing?+
Yes, and the last week of August is the busiest week of the year for precisely this. Nobody can say how many copies of a student-house key are circulating after five or six tenancies. Front door, back door and any bedroom locks are repinned to one key at $22 to $37 each.
Our building has a master key. Does repinning one unit break it?+
No. A unit cylinder is repinned with its master wafers kept in place, so the tenant gets a new change key and the building master still opens that door. Mailbox locks are a separate item, since most are wafer locks supplied with fixed keys and are swapped rather than repinned.
Repin or replace on a 1920s Elmwood house?+
Repin, if the mortise mechanism still throws and retracts smoothly. Original hardware on those streets is worth more than anything on sale today, and repinning ends the old keys without a screwdriver going near the trim. Where a lever pack is worn to the point of skipping, replacement is the honest answer and you get it at the door.
Related
More residential services
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one figure, agreed before the work starts
Calls answered 24/7 across Berkeley and the north East Bay. The $89 service call, the labour and the parts are inside the number you agree to, and nothing is added to it afterwards.