Rekey between every tenancy, not replace. Returned keys tell you nothing — copies cost a few dollars at any hardware shop and nobody has to declare them. Rekeying costs a fraction of replacement, takes 15 to 25 minutes a cylinder, and is the single clearest thing a landlord can point to if a break-in is…
If you own the property, rekey every exterior cylinder and you are done. If you rent, check your lease and speak to the landlord first — in most Louisiana tenancies the tenant does not have the right to change locks unilaterally, and doing it anyway can put your deposit and your tenancy at risk. Two…
The security jobs worth doing in a new house, in order of what they actually buy you: rekey every exterior cylinder, put three-inch screws through the strikes into the studs, check the garage-to-house door, then deal with sliding doors and outbuildings. Most of this is one visit and a screwdriver, not a renovation. There is…
Yes, and rekeying is almost always the right version of it. Nobody can tell you how many copies of the old key exist, and rekeying kills every one of them in about 15 to 25 minutes a cylinder while leaving your hardware on the door. Full replacement is only needed if the hardware itself is…
Doors on the Gulf Coast move for two separate reasons: timber swells and shrinks with the seasons, and the slab underneath settles unevenly over years. Swelling is temporary and reverses. Settlement does not. Telling them apart decides whether you adjust the strike or leave it alone until autumn. A door that binds in July and…
Locks fail faster in Louisiana because three things run at once: salt carried inland off the lake corrodes cylinder internals, humidity above 75 percent for months keeps moisture inside the mechanism, and timber doors swell and shrink seasonally. A lockset that would last fifteen years in a dry state often gets eight here. People move…
Most locks people think are broken are not. Roughly speaking: if it works with the door open, the fault is the door. If a spare key fixes it, the fault is the key. If it is stiff on both keys with the door open, the cylinder needs cleaning. Only wobble, pitting and shearing mean the…
If the key turns all the way but the door stays shut, the cylinder has done its job and something after it has failed — a sheared tailpiece, a disconnected spindle, a bolt jammed in the strike, or a second lock you have forgotten is thrown. The good news is the pins are fine, so…
A door that won’t latch is almost never a lock fault. The latch and the strike hole have stopped lining up, usually because the frame has moved, the hinges have sagged, or the door has swollen. The lipstick test finds the misalignment in about two minutes and tells you which way to move the strike….
A lock that feels loose is usually loose fixings, a worn spindle or chassis, or a door that has swollen and pulled the hardware out of line. Of the three, only one is a five-minute fix with a screwdriver. The other two mean the hardware is at the end of its life — and unlike…