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.
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 before the figure is named
How long until the van reaches my part of San Rafael?+
Twenty-one minutes is the average across the city, which is long and narrow along 101 rather than compact. Downtown and Fourth Street usually see the van in 15 minutes, Gerstle Park, Dominican and the Canal in 17, Sun Valley and Fairhills in 19, Terra Linda and Marinwood in 21. Peacock Gap and Point San Pedro run about 24, because there is one road in along the water, and Lucas Valley about 26, because the driveways there are the longest in the city. San Anselmo is about 22, Larkspur 21, Corte Madera 22, Mill Valley 28 and Novato 30. The thirty-minute window in your text comes from where the van is and what 101 is doing at that moment, not from the average.
Does the figure change after eight, on a weekend or on a holiday?+
Weekends and holidays are charged at daytime figures. Arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $55, and arrival between midnight and 7am adds $90. Both are inside the figure named on the call. A $125 house lockout is therefore named as $180 in the evening and $215 overnight, and that is the figure the card is charged. A daytime figure with an evening addition produced at the door is not how it is done here.
What is inside the figure, and what could change it?+
The $89 service call, the labor, the parts fitted, the drive up the hill and any evening or overnight hour, named as one figure before you decide. A gated driveway, a keypad, stairs, a buzzer panel or a garage level do not alter it. The only addition is a second job you ask for once the technician is there, such as rekeying the guest house after the main door has been opened. That is named as its own figure and started only after you say yes.
Will my lock be drilled?+
Only after the non-destructive methods have been tried and you have agreed. Apartment cylinders, residential deadbolts, the mortise sets in Gerstle Park, aluminum storefront hardware and most car doors open with picks, decoders, bypass tools or an air wedge and go on working afterward. Drilling comes up when a cylinder is high-security, already damaged, or seized by a broken key or the salt air near the Marina. In that case the technician explains the mechanism, names the replacement part and its cost, and the total stays at the figure named on the call.
What proof is needed, and can a housekeeper or a property manager act for the owner?+
For a house or condo: photo ID with the address, or ID plus a lease, a utility bill or addressed mail on your phone if the ID shows somewhere else. For a car: ID plus registration or an insurance card, digital is fine. For a shop, office or suite: ID plus a lease, a business license, or confirmation from the property manager or the company. A housekeeper, a gardener or a property manager holding keys on the owner's behalf may authorize the work if the owner confirms by text or email to the technician, or if the manager's name is on the lease or the management agreement. The receipt can then be addressed to the owner or to the manager, whichever the owner prefers. Without one of those the door stays closed. The rule that keeps a stranger out of your house is the one being applied.
The house is behind a gate with a keypad and an intercom, at the end of a long driveway. What should I say on the call?+
Say so, and say how the technician gets through the gate: a code, a call from the gate to your phone, or someone coming down to open it. If the gate itself is the problem, say that too, because a keypad that has lost its code and a gate lock that has failed are different jobs, and the figure is named for the right one. The drive from the gate to the door is inside the figure whatever its length. On the way out the gate is closed, the code is not kept, and nothing is left on the driveway.
Our Gerstle Park house still has its original 1910s hardware. Does it have to be replaced?+
Rarely. The hardware on those houses was built to be taken apart and put back. A mortise case can be cleaned, its springs replaced and its levers re-tensioned on the porch, and the cylinder rekeyed so the old keys stop working while the brass plate and the glass knob stay where they have been for a century. A latch that no longer catches is usually a worn strike, not a failed lock. If the case is beyond repair, a new mortise body is sized to the pocket already cut in the door, so nothing is cut fresh. Describe the door on the call and the figure is named for the likely route; if the other route is needed once the case is open, the technician says so and the figure stays as named.
Do you come into the Fourth Street garages, the Civic Center lots, the ferry lot and the Marina?+
Yes. Car lockouts, key cutting and fob programming are done in the garages off Fourth Street, the lots at the Marin Civic Center and Kaiser, the Larkspur ferry lot, the Northgate structure and the lots at the Marina and China Camp. Say which lot, which level and roughly where the car sits. For a gated garage under a condo building, have someone able to let the van in or meet it at the entrance. The ferry lot at half past five in the afternoon is honestly slower, and the window in your text will say so. The figure does not change for any of it.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
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.