San Rafael neighborhood · 24/7
Gerstle Park locksmith work on 1900s and 1920s doors that still carry the knob set and the keyhole they were built with
The oldest neighborhood in the city, on the slope south of Fourth Street: Victorian and Craftsman houses from the 1900s through the 1920s, deep porches, front doors with a glass panel and a mortise knob set, houses owned by one family for forty years, and streets that go quiet by nine.
4.9 / 5· 228 reviews from San Rafael & the Marin towns beside it
17 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The doors here are the reason the van carries mortise parts and a box of odd spindles. A Craftsman front door in Gerstle Park has a glass panel, a bronze knob set with a keyhole for a bit key, and a rim night latch screwed to the inside face in the 1940s when the family stopped trusting the bit key. The night latch is the real lock and its cylinder can be rekeyed at $26 to $43. The knob set is often worth keeping as it is: the latch works, the knobs turn, and what wears out is the spindle and the set screw, which are replaced without touching the plate. Where the mortise case has cracked at the bolt, a modern case fits behind the original plate and the door looks as it did; that is a lock replacement at $119 to $319 per door, and the technician says plainly which doors are worth the trouble. On these streets it is most of them.
Lockouts here are few and mostly at the back. The kitchen door onto the porch latches behind someone taking the compost out, the front is bolted, and the side gate is a wood gate on a drop latch. That is $125 to $215, opened without damage first. Houses change hands slowly, and when they do the new owner arrives with one key and a house whose other keys went out over decades to a gardener, a neighbor and a grown child. The first visit is a count: front, kitchen, cellar door under the porch, garage at the back of the lot, and the gate. A safe in a hall closet whose combination left with the estate is opened at $189 to $525, in most cases with the door intact.
The streets are narrow, the trees are large and the houses sit up a flight of steps from the sidewalk, so the van stops at the curb and the case goes up on foot. Arrival is about seventeen minutes by way of Fourth Street or the streets below the ridge. Smart locks are asked about by adult children who want a code for a caregiver, and a 1912 slab with a glass panel is not the door for one; the kitchen door usually is, at $185 to $469, with the front left as it was built. Evening calls carry $55 between 8pm and midnight and $90 overnight, inside the figure named on the call.
Say whether the front door still has its original knob set and keyhole, and send a photo of the inside face of the door if you can. Count the cellar door and the gate. On these houses the total is larger than it looks from the porch.
FAQ
What people ask about Gerstle Park
We have owned the house forty years and nobody knows how many keys exist. Where does a rekey start?+
With a count rather than a guess. Front door, kitchen door onto the porch, the cellar door underneath, the garage at the back of the lot and the side gate, each priced per cylinder. Walk the property before you call and count keyholes rather than keys. The figure follows the number of cylinders, and it is named once you have that number.
The side gate is wood on a drop latch and it has swelled shut. Is that a locksmith job?+
It is, when it stands between someone and a door. A swollen gate on a drop latch is eased and rehung rather than replaced, and a keyed latch on the house key can go on afterwards so one key opens the gate and the back door. Say on the call whether that gate is the only way to the rear of the house.
A safe was left in the hall closet by the previous owner and nobody has the combination.+
The dial is manipulated open where the safe stands, in most cases without cutting, and the combination is then set to one you choose. Older residential safes in these houses are usually the kind that open that way. Say the make and roughly the size on the call: a floor safe set in concrete and a closet safe are different figures.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
One call, one full figure, the same figure on the receipt
Calls answered 24/7 across San Rafael and the Marin towns beside it. The $89 service call, the labor, the parts and the drive up the hill are inside the figure named on the call, and the receipt repeats it.