San Leandro neighborhood · 24/7
Estudillo Estates and Best Manor, where the hardware is older than the owners and the key ring has eleven keys on it
Wide streets off Estudillo Avenue, with Best Manor beside them and the Casa Peralta at the edge. Houses from the twenties through the forties, deep lawns, transoms, heavy front doors, garages sitting at the end of a long strip driveway. Fifteen minutes from the van, and most of this work lands before lunch.
4.9 / 5· 268 reviews from San Leandro, the works and the strip beside them
15 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The recurring job here is not a broken lock, it is a key ring that has outlived its accounting. A family that has held the same house since the Cherry Festival parades of the sixties will hand over eleven keys, of which four open nothing anyone can identify, two are stamped by a hardware store that closed in 1988, and one belongs to a garage that was rebuilt. Rekeying at $26 to $42 per cylinder ends that, and the number depends only on how many cylinders are on the property, which is why the tally is taken over the phone and the figure is fixed then. On a house of this age the tally usually runs six or seven: the front, the kitchen door, the door off the back porch, the garage, one or two yard gates, and now and then a basement hatch that has not been opened since the last remodel.
Original hardware is worth keeping and it usually can be kept. What defeats it here is paint. Five coats over eighty years glue the escutcheon to the face of the door, seal the bolt into its strike after a wet week, and pack the keyway until a key rides high and refuses the last quarter turn. Cleaning and repinning solves most of that on the visit. Where a case is genuinely cracked at the bolt, a replacement that sits behind the same face plate is $115 to $299 per door, so nothing about the porch looks different from the sidewalk afterward. Interior doors on these houses often still carry warded locks and skeleton keys, and those are pleasant to look at and are not security, which gets said straight rather than sold around.
Two more things come off these blocks. A lockout is $119 to $205, and on a door of this vintage the whole point is getting in without harming a lock that no factory has made since before the war. And when a house changes hands after a long ownership or through an estate, there is often a safe: a floor unit in the garage or a small wall box behind a closet panel, with a combination that nobody living remembers. Opening one is $185 to $495, and the door is normally usable afterward. Driveways here are long and the van parks at the curb; the walk up is not charged for. Calls are answered 24/7, with $45 inside the figure between 8pm and midnight and $80 between midnight and 7am.
Count the doors before you call: front, kitchen, back porch, garage, and each yard gate. If the front hardware is original, one photo of the face plate tells the technician what to load. For an estate or a probate sale, say so, and the receipt will carry the keys-handed-over line the file needs.
Most requested in Estudillo Estates & Best Manor
FAQ
Asked from Estudillo Estates & Best Manor
How do I count the cylinders on a house this old before I call?+
Walk it once: the front, the kitchen door, the door off the back porch, the garage, each yard gate, and any basement hatch. Six or seven is the usual tally on these blocks. That count is the whole basis of the figure, so having it ready means the number you hear on the call is the number you pay.
Can the garage at the end of the driveway go on the same key as the house?+
Usually yes, as long as its lock takes a standard cylinder, and most of the wooden tilt-ups on these streets do. It joins the tally at the per-cylinder figure instead of starting a second visit. If the garage was rebuilt at some point and carries newer hardware than the house, that gets said while the count is taken.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Houses in the morning, shop floors after, and the figure said before either one starts
San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Ashland, Oakland, the airport and Doolittle strip, and Alameda across the channel, 24/7, holidays included. Describe the door, hear one figure with the $89 visit inside it and the unit it is counted in, and the lock gets opened without damage wherever it can be. The receipt says what the call said, whether the deed is in your name or the lease is.