Lock Repair & Replacement in Charlotte, NC

Usually not. A deadbolt that turns freely with the door open and binds with the door closed is almost always a strike-plate alignment problem: the door has settled on its hinges over a season or two, and the bolt now lands on the edge of the hole instead of inside it. The fix is to tighten or re-shim the hinges and move or enlarge the strike, which takes less time than describing it. If the bolt binds with the door open as well, the problem is inside the lock — a bent bolt from someone forcing the door, or a worn cam — and that is a repair of the lock body or, on cheaper hardware, a replacement. Tell us which of the two you have when you call and the quote will already be for the right job.

Nearly always. A key that needs persuading is one of two things: the key itself has worn down from years of use, or the pins and springs inside the cylinder are gummed up with dirt and old spray lubricant. The first is fixed by cutting a fresh key from the manufacturer's code or from the lock itself rather than copying the worn key, which only copies the wear. The second is a cylinder clean and a dry lubricant. Either one leaves you with the lock you already own working the way it did on the day it was fitted. If a jiggling key has been ignored long enough, pins do eventually break, and then it is a rekey-grade repair — new pins in the existing cylinder — rather than new hardware.

It depends on what the old lock is, and it is a question we answer at the door rather than on a policy. A solid deadbolt from a major brand is worth repairing almost regardless of age, because parts exist and the mechanism is good. A knob lock on an exterior door is worth replacing even if it works, because a knob lock on its own is not a locked door — the latch yields to a card or a shove — and the right move is to keep the knob for convenience and add a deadbolt above it. A bargain lockset from a builder's bulk order, decades on, is usually a replacement because nobody makes the parts and the repair would cost what the new lock does. Rekeying is a separate decision: new hardware can be keyed to your existing key so you do not end up carrying two.

Yes. New deadbolts, knob and lever sets, handlesets, and smart or keypad locks go in on the same visit as any repair, on an existing bore or a freshly prepared door. Two things are worth knowing before you buy. First, almost every smart lock still has a mechanical key cylinder under the cover, and we can key it to match the rest of the house so one key runs everything. Second, a lock is only as strong as the door and frame around it, which is why we look at the strike plate and hinges on every installation rather than bolting good hardware onto a frame that would split on the first kick. If you already have hardware you want fitted, bring it; if not, we carry stock and will say plainly which grade suits the door.

The visit works the same way, but commercial hardware is a different set of parts: lever locks with cylinders that pull out for rekeying, mortise locks, panic bars with hardware that has to meet fire and egress rules, door closers that slam or fail to latch, and storefront locks with their own cylinders. We repair or replace all of those, and the fire-exit hardware is the one area where repair is never improvised — a panic bar that does not open from the inside is a code violation as well as a hazard. For rekeying after staff turnover, master-key systems and the rest of what a business needs, there is a separate page for commercial locksmith work; for a single broken lock on a storefront door, this is the right place to start and the phone number is the same.