Kitsilano locksmith
From West 4th shops to the beach-side walk-ups.
Kits packs four kinds of building into about twenty blocks, each with its own lock. Describe yours when you call, and you get the method and the price before any work begins.
Kitsilano has four kinds of door, and they do not share a lock.
Craftsman houses south of West Broadway
Original 1910s and 1920s houses, many still on the first lock ever fitted: mortise sets and rim locks. If you have one, it can usually be serviced and rekeyed in place rather than swapped out.
Three-storey walk-ups between Cornwall and 4th Avenue
The 1960s and 1970s blocks: standard cylinders on suite doors, a common entry the building controls, and a mailbox bank in the lobby. Suite doors are yours; the lobby and the bank are the building's.
Beach-side condos along Point Grey Road and Cornwall
Newer concrete and wood-frame buildings with fob entry, parkades and balcony sliders that live in salt air. In your unit, the slider goes first. Rollers flatten, the door drops, the hook stops finding the keeper.
Shopfronts along West 4th Avenue and West Broadway
Your front door is probably narrow-stile aluminum with hook bolts and mortise cylinders, cycling hundreds of times a day. Commercial hardware, commercial wear, and usually a lane door that gets used more than anyone admits.
What Kits homeowners, tenants and shopkeepers call a locksmith for.
Getting back into a Kits house when the only key is inside
The key is inside and you are not. We try non-destructive entry first, wherever the lock allows, so the hundred-year-old hardware can stay in your door.
Rekeys after a Kitsilano sale closes or a suite tenant moves on
Nobody can tell you how many keys to your Kits house exist by now. That is the whole argument for rekeying on possession day. Rekeys from $35, plus the $75 mobile service call.
Deadbolts fitted to original Kits front doors
Your original front door can almost always take one. It takes care with the stile width, the glazing and the fact that the door is not square any more.
Storefront lock repairs and rekeys on West 4th
Hook bolts, closers and mortise cylinders on aluminum doors, usually scheduled around your opening hours rather than during them.
Car keys made in the Kits Beach parking lot
Cut and programmed at your vehicle, for most makes. Have the registration and photo ID ready, and tell us whether any working key survives. That answer changes the job more than anything else.
Getting a van to a Kitsilano door, from the Burrard Bridge to the permit-parking blocks.
From downtown, the way to your door in Kits is over the Burrard or Granville Bridge, and both have opinions about the time of day.
Once we are in the neighbourhood, parking near you is the real constraint. Many residential blocks north of 4th are permit-only, West 4th has loading restrictions, and in summer the beach lots fill by mid-morning.
None of that stops the job. It does mean telling us your nearest cross street, whether there is a lane and, if you are in a building, which door to come to.
Our shop at 929 Drake Street opens soon. Every job is mobile until then, in Kits and anywhere in the Lower Mainland. Evenings, weekends and holidays are by appointment.
Kits heritage doors have opinions about modern deadbolts.
Say your door is 1912 fir. It is not a modern blank slab. It has a narrow stile, often a glass panel, and frequently a mortise pocket already cut for hardware nobody makes any more.
Add a hundred years of seasonal movement, and a standard big-box deadbolt fitted without measuring gives you a split stile, a bolt that misses, or a lock that works in August and binds in November.
So we start with your door, not the catalogue. We measure the stile and the backset first, and keep the original mortise set where it can be serviced.
That old mortise set is often better built than whatever would replace it, even on doors where the strike has been chiselled twice as the frame moved.
Where a deadbolt does go in, we bore it properly and reinforce the strike into the framing rather than the trim. The old door usually outlives the argument.
Kitsilano lock questions we hear on West 4th and at the beach.
Can you put a deadbolt on a Kits front door that has a glass panel?
Usually. A double-cylinder deadbolt means you need a key to get out, a real fire risk. The better answer is a single-cylinder bolt set where an arm through a broken panel cannot reach the thumbturn.
I lost my car key somewhere on Kits Beach. What happens now?
We come to your car. Tell us the year, make and model. With no key left, the cuts can usually be decoded and a new key taught to the immobilizer, quoted before any work begins.
Do you rekey the older walk-up apartments near Cornwall Avenue?
Your own suite door, yes. If you rent, that takes the owner's or property manager's okay. The common entry and mailbox bank belong to the building, so they go through its owner, strata or manager.
Can a West 4th shop have one key for the front door and the lane door?
Usually. If both cylinders share a compatible keyway, they can be rekeyed to one key. If not, one can often be swapped. Better decided on purpose than inherited from the last three tenants.
Send us the Kits address and a description of the lock. We will take it from there.
Tell us your address and nearest cross street, whether it is a house, walk-up, condo or shop, and what the lock looks like. That is usually enough to plan the job and the price.