Non-destructive entry first, always - and we re-key Schlage, Kwikset, and Baldwin locks on the spot while you watch
You get a price before we start. It does not change when we arrive. No surprises.
Fast, Reliable Door Lock Repair Across San Anselmo
Most door lock repairs in San Anselmo involve hardware that was installed before World War II. A seized mortise lock on a 1920s Craftsman, a broken skeleton key in an original Victorian cylinder, a salt-corroded strike plate on a hillside property that faces the bay. These are not generic jobs, and they are exactly what our Door Lock Repair team handles weekly across Marin County’s oldest residential cores. We serve the whole town, from the creek corridor to the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard antique district, usually arriving the same day you call.
You will not reach voicemail when you phone (910) 714-4287. A live person answers, takes the details, and dispatches a named technician with a photo ID who carries the parts to rebuild original iron and brass hardware, not just swap it out for something modern that never fits the door prep right.
Why Dunmore Locksmith Is San Anselmo’s Preferred Door Lock Repair Company
San Anselmo homeowners call us for the same reason they buy from the antique shops along Sir Francis Drake: they want someone who respects what is already there. The town is built on pre-1940 housing stock, and the repair work we do here often means disassembling a two-piece mortise lock assembly, cleaning a century of silt and oxidation out of it, fitting a marine-grade stainless strike plate, and reassembling the original brass face onto a door that still has its original porcelain knob. That is not a task for a locksmith whose standard answer is to drill and replace.
Our customers in San Anselmo tend to check who they are letting through the door, and rightly so. Every Dunmore technician is background-checked, identity-verified, uniformed, and sent to you by name and photo before the visit. This is our Threshold Standard, and if anyone shows up who was not announced in advance, that visit is on us. Perry Osgood, who leads our team, has built the entire operation around the principle that you should never have to wonder whether the person at your door is legitimate.
Since 2007, we have worked as part of the Threshold Group network of independent local locksmith businesses. That means our prices are always put in writing before any work begins, the full-year Done Right Promise covers every repair, and the phone is answered by a human being at 2 a.m. the same way it is at 2 p.m.
Broken Key Extractor in San Anselmo
Broken Key Extractor work in San Anselmo is a near-daily call for us, and it is not just front doors. Antique furniture locks from the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard shops, skeleton keys snapped off in original mortise cylinders, old trunk hardware with key tips broken off inside. Removing a broken key from a modern Kwikset deadbolt is straightforward with the right extractor tools, but extracting a snapped key from a 1920s iron mortise lock without damaging the cylinder requires patience and pressure control that most homeowners do not have, and should not attempt with a paperclip.
A standard broken key extraction from a door lock typically runs $85 to $145 in San Anselmo, depending on how deeply the fragment is seated and whether the cylinder needs to be pulled and serviced afterward. If the key broke because the cylinder itself was failing, we will tell you before we touch anything else, and you will have the written price in hand for any follow-up work.
When Key Debris Demands Cylinder Removal
If the broken key piece has wedged between pins inside the cylinder, pulling the lock core out is the clean route. We disconnect the mortise assembly from the edge of the door, remove the cylinder, and work the fragment out with a spiral extractor, then test every pin stack before reinserting it. On older Schlage and Yale mortise cylinders in San Anselmo bungalows, this is almost always the recommended path, because forcing a pick or extractor into a corroded pin chamber can shear a pin and ruin an otherwise rebuildable lock.
Antique Trunk and Cabinet Key Extraction
The shop owners and collectors along the antique corridor bring us 19th-century furniture locks, steamer trunks, and ornate escutcheon-fitted boxes with key tips stuck inside. These are not jobs for a drill. We loosen the fragment with a bent-spring extractor, never bore the lock body, and cut a replacement key in the shop from the lock’s warding pattern if the original is beyond saving. Expect $95 to $160 for this kind of work, depending on the complexity of the keyway.
Sliding Door Lock Repair in San Anselmo
Sliding Door Lock Repair in San Anselmo has a specific rhythm to it that fits this town’s housing mix. The postwar hillside infill homes and the creek-adjacent cottages both run a lot of patio sliders and pocket doors, and the hardware fails in predictable ways. The latch hook misaligns as the door settles, the mortise-style sliding door lock corrodes from the damp air that settles along San Anselmo Creek, and the thumb-turn cylinder shears when a fogged or swollen panel gets forced.
Most sliding door lock repairs here run $110 to $190 when we can reset the alignment and service the existing hardware. If the lock body itself needs replacing, that puts you in the $160 to $240 range, depending on whether we are fitting a standard surface-mount slide lock or working a mortise latch into a period-appropriate door that was never designed for modern dimensions.
Resetting Latch Alignment Without New Hardware
On many San Anselmo sliding doors, the problem is not the lock mechanism but the door’s position in its track. Wet winters swell the wooden door panels, and the latch hook drifts a quarter-inch out of line with the keeper. We adjust the rollers, reset the keeper plate, and sometimes shim the strike if the frame has settled. The lock itself often just needs cleaning and lubrication once the geometry is right again.
Retrofitting Modern Locks into Thin Vintage Doors
Some of the interior sliding doors in pre-1940 San Anselmo homes were built with door prep that is far too thin for a modern sliding lock body. Forcing one in cracks the stile. Instead, we surface-mount a low-profile hook latch or a flush cup pull, and we do it without drilling out the original hardware pockets. The result locks firmly and still looks like it belongs to the house.
Trusted Brands We Service in San Anselmo
Our San Anselmo jobs take us into hardware from every era, which means we work on Schlage, Kwikset, Medeco, and Yale equipment from the last fifty years as well as the unmarked iron mortise locks that predate all of them. We are qualified to service high-security Medeco cylinders and to rekey original Kwikset or Schlage pin-tumbler locks without replacing the whole unit. Because most San Anselmo homes run a mix of hardware generations, we carry a broad parts stock so we can rebuild a 1930s mortise assembly on the same visit we rekey a 2015 Schlage deadbolt. You are not waiting on a parts order that takes another week.
Common Door Lock Repair Problems We See in San Anselmo Homes
- Salt-laden air seizing pin and tumbler stacks. Homes on the western-facing hillsides catch the marine wind that pushes through the Ross Valley gap, and we see brass cylinders that turn stiffly or not at all. The fix is a full disassembly, solvent bath, and fresh dry lubricant, then a marine-grade stainless replacement if the brass has pitted beyond service.
- Silt-filled mortise locks along the creek corridor. San Anselmo Creek has flooded repeatedly over the decades, and low-lying homes near downtown pick up bolt mechanisms packed with fine silt. That grit works into the deadbolt throw and the cylinder, and no amount of WD-40 clears it. We strip, wash, and reassemble these locks instead of replacing them.
- Pre-standard door prep that will not accept a modern backset. A 1921 Craftsman door is barely thick enough for an original two-piece mortise lock, let alone a modern cylindrical deadbolt. When we see a new deadbolt forced into a thin vintage door, we are usually there to repair the damage and restore proper function with period-correct hardware.
- Swollen frames from wet winters throwing strikes out of alignment. When the frame absorbs creek moisture and expands, the latch no longer reaches the strike plate. We re-cut or shim the strike, ease the door edge where needed, and adjust the hinges so the lock cycles without you having to lift the door by its knob.
Pricing for Door Lock Repair in San Anselmo, CA
A basic door lock repair in San Anselmo, where we can service the existing cylinder and reinstall the hardware, runs $85 to $145. Rebuilding a two-piece mortise lock in place, including cleaning the cylinder, lubricating the bolt, and fitting a stainless strike, runs $145 to $240. Sliding door lock repair sits between $110 and $240, depending on whether we can salvage the existing hardware. A broken key extraction falls between $85 and $160. The number that matters is the one we write down before any work begins: that price is the price on the invoice, no call-out surcharge on arrival, no revised total after the job is done.
When you call (910) 714-4287, we quote the job over the phone, then confirm it in writing before dispatch. Every repair is covered by the 365-Day Done Right Promise: if the repair fails within a year, we come back at no charge. That is true for every San Anselmo job, no exceptions.
We Also Serve Cities Near San Anselmo
Our San Anselmo customers are not the only ones we help. We regularly take calls from Fairfax, Kentfield, San Rafael, and Larkspur, and the same written-price policy and named technician protocol applies in every town we cover.
Serving San Anselmo, CA - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the San Anselmo area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage - if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs About Door Lock Repair in San Anselmo
Yes, and in most San Anselmo bungalows that is exactly what we recommend. We remove the two-piece mortise assembly, free the seized cylinder, clean and lubricate the bolt, and fit a steel or stainless strike plate. Your original brass face and iron body stay on the door, and the lock will cycle as smoothly as it did in 1930. Call (910) 714-4287 for an in-person assessment and a written repair quote.
Yes, and the damage is not always obvious from the outside. Floodwater along the creek corridor carries fine silt into the bolt mechanism and cylinder, which grinds the pins and seizes the deadbolt throw. Strike plates corrode, and wooden door frames swell enough to pull the latch out of alignment. If your home sits near the creek and the lock has started to bind, have it stripped and serviced before it fails completely. The phone number is (910) 714-4287.
We can. We cut skeleton keys from the lock’s actual warding pattern rather than trying to fit a generic blank, and we do it in our shop, often the same day. If you bring in the furniture lock or trunk lock mechanism, we can match the key to the iron and give you a precise price before cutting anything. Expect $45 to $95 for a single custom-cut skeleton key, depending on the complexity of the wards.
Rarely. Most lockouts in San Anselmo can be resolved by picking the cylinder or working the latch back with a controlled bypass, and we always try the non-destructive route first. If the lock is a high-security Medeco or has a severely worn cylinder, drilling may be the only option, but we will tell you that before we touch the drill, and you will know the exact cost of the replacement cylinder in advance. The number to call from the porch is (910) 714-4287.
Yes. Hillside properties and older San Anselmo homes often have three or four different keyways across the house: original mortise locks, a 1980s deadbolt, a newer Kwikset or Schlage on the rear door. We rekey the pin-tumbler locks to match a single key, and where the original mortise locks cannot accept a modern key, we can either cut a matching skeleton key or retrofit a compatible cylinder into the existing face. You end up with fewer keys and no loss of period hardware. Call (910) 714-4287 to schedule a walk-through and get a written per-lock quote.
Contact Dunmore Locksmith for Door Lock Repair in San Anselmo, CA
When a lock fails, you do not have time to verify three different companies and compare five estimates. Call (910) 714-4287 and speak to a live person. We will give you a written price, send a named technician with a photo ID, and stand behind the work for a full year. That is the Dunmore way, and in a town full of century-old locks and creek-corridor hardware, it is the only way worth doing.
Written by Perry Osgood, Owner at Dunmore Locksmith, serving San Anselmo and Marin County as part of the Threshold Group since 2007.