Post Break-In Lock Repair in San Rafael

The report number is on a card on the counter, and the front door no longer meets its frame. That is the hour these calls come in. A Sun Valley house with the garage underneath and the door above it kicked at the strike. A Terra Linda Eichler whose slider was levered off its track. A guest house behind a Dominican hedge, entered while the family was at Tahoe. A Canal apartment where the jamb split along the grain. A shop on Fourth Street with the stile bent around a missing cylinder. Marin Lock & Key puts the door back in service the same day and rebuilds the frame around it so the next shove meets framing, not trim.

Nothing goes on the list until the technician has walked the whole lot: every exterior door, the garage, the guest house, the side gate and any window a person can reach from the ground, since the second weak point is rarely far from the first. Photographs are taken as they go, for the insurer. On a kicked door what actually failed is nearly always the strike, a section of jamb and the bolt; the deadbolt body is usually sound. Two short screws holding a strike in soft fir are the whole story. So the strike is replaced with a wraparound plate on three-inch screws driven into the stud, a steel sleeve goes over the split jamb, and the hinge side gets long screws too, so that leaf cannot be pried instead. Every lock that survived is repinned in the same visit; a key taken from a hook by the back door now turns nothing.

Post break-in repair is named between $165 and $435. One new deadbolt with a reinforced strike on the door that gave is $165. A rebuilt jamb, two replacement locks, hinge screws and repins on the rest of the house reach $435. The $89 service call sits inside those numbers. Whatever was named from your description and your photograph holds when the van arrives. Anything the walk-through turns up beyond that is explained, named and agreed before a hand is laid on it.

You call and describe the door: which door, what it looks like now, and a photograph if one is possible. The full figure is named from that. The van leaves and calls from the gate, after the text with the name and the window. The receipt repeats the figure: the walk-through, the photographs, your agreement to the itemized list, the repair, the reinforcement, the repins, and each door pulled shut against its weatherstrip and locked from outside. Card or tap, and a receipt an adjuster accepts without a second call.