Locksmith in Decatur, GA: New Keys for a New Home, and for the Car

Closing day puts the seller's keys in your hand. It does not tell you who else still has one: relatives of the last owner, a neighbor who fed the cat, contractors who worked on the house, a copy that sat in a listing lockbox. Nobody did anything wrong, and there is no way to know. A rekey settles the question. Once the pins inside a cylinder are changed, every key cut before that day stops turning it, while the knob, the lever and the deadbolt stay exactly where they are on the door.

Here is what changes inside. A standard pin tumbler cylinder holds a row of small pin stacks. The lower pins, the key pins, are sized to the cuts of one particular key (its bitting), with driver pins and springs above them. A rekey means pulling the cylinder from the lock body, sliding the plug free, and dropping in new key pins that fit a different key. Finish, trim and door prep are untouched; only what the lock reads is different. A lock that is loose, cracked or worn out is the exception and gets replaced instead, a choice the Mableton page walks through in detail.

A move is also the easy moment to put the whole house on one key. Keying alike means pinning several cylinders to the same bitting, and it works when they share a keyway: two Kwikset KW1 cylinders can take one key, and so can two Schlage SC1 cylinders, but a KW1 and an SC1 cannot until one of them is swapped for the other keyway. That is why the technician asks to see every key the seller left, labeled or not, and matches each one to its lock before pinning anything. Planning a keyed-alike house is covered in depth on the Virginia-Highland page.

Some locks let the owner rekey them. Kwikset's SmartKey Security cylinders rekey with the small tool in the box, but Kwikset's own instructions start with the key that currently works, and with that key gone Kwikset points owners to a locksmith. Doors the seller left no key for, and houses with a mix of brands, are rekeyed by the technician at the house.

Two things a rekey does not reach. The overhead garage door answers to the remotes and keypad codes stored in its opener; on LiftMaster openers, holding the Learn button about six seconds until its light goes out clears every stored remote and keypad code, and then you program back only the remotes you are keeping. The walk-in door from the garage into the house is a lock like the front door and goes on the rekey list. The mailbox is the other one: a compartment in a postal-owned cluster box unit has a lock the Postal Service provides, so it is handled through the Post Office, and for other mailboxes USPS tells new residents to get the keys from the owner, manager or prior resident. If you rent rather than own, the locks belong to the landlord, so ask before any rekey; a property manager can book it for the unit.

When someone leaves the business with a key, the fix is to rekey every cylinder that key opened, which is why the first question is a list of doors. Where a master key system is in place, the new pinning is worked out from the key chart, so the lost change key dies while the masters still open everything. Everything a business door can need is on commercial locksmith service, and the commercial lock change guide covers when a rekey is enough and when hardware has to change.

In a master key system the owner carries one key for the whole building, each manager a sub-master for a zone, and each employee a key for a single door, and the key chart records every level. Put on a restricted keyway, the blanks stay out of retail key machines, so a copy needs an authorized source. Bring a floor plan with each door marked by who should get through it; the master key system setup guide shows how the levels are planned.

Access control swaps the staff door key for a keypad code, a card or a fob. A departing employee's credential is deleted that same day instead of chasing a key, and a system with an entry log records who came in and when. Exit devices keep a door locked from outside while anyone inside gets out with one push; 4Keys installs them, fixes push bars that jam or fail to catch, and fits the outside trim with a key cylinder. A glass-and-aluminum shop door with a thin frame needs narrow-stile parts, a mortise cylinder driving a hook-bolt deadlock, so mention what the door is made of and whether there is one leaf or two.

If a rekey during business hours would get in the way, set a time after closing. The surcharge window runs between 9 PM and 7 AM local time, and on Sundays and federal holidays; the dispatcher states it in the quote on the same call. If the owner or a manager cannot get into the business, the technician opens it whatever the hour, and when a key has vanished, the rekey can be done before the technician leaves.