After a break-in, is the lock usually what failed?
Rarely. In most break-ins the bolt holds and something around it gives way: the strike tears out of the door frame, a sliding door gets lifted or pried at the latch, or a key nobody was keeping track of opens the door cleanly. How they got in names the job, and it is the first thing to tell an emergency locksmith in Albertville when you call.
That matters because the instinct after a break-in is to spend on the part that looks like security. A shiny new deadbolt on a frame that still has splinters where the strike used to be locks no better than the old one did. Whether a particular lock should be rekeyed or swapped out is its own question, and the rekey-or-replace guide sorts that out by situation.
The door was kicked in. Can it be made to lock tonight?
Usually, yes. On most kicked doors the deadbolt is still in one piece, sticking out of the door’s edge, and the strike plate is what tore loose from the frame along with a strip of trim wood. Setting a strike into solid framing, with screws that reach the stud instead of stopping in the trim, gets the door locking again on the same visit.
Photos come first, then a look at the frame before anyone touches it. If the jamb is splintered only where the strike sat, the repair is mostly that strike. If the jamb is split along its length, or a piece of it is hanging loose, the door can still be made to lock, but it needs a temporary secure until the frame is rebuilt.
On most houses, the brick ranches around Albertville included, the door jamb is a thin board shimmed into the opening with a gap behind it before the framing starts. The original strike was held by short screws that never left that board. A kick takes the strike and a strip of wood with it while the bolt comes through untouched, so the repair puts the new screws past the gap and into the stud.
A temporary secure means the door closes and locks properly for now, using whatever solid wood remains next to the damage. Sometimes that is a strike set a little off from the old spot. On a back door the family can do without for a few days, the locksmith may secure it shut from the inside and leave the door alone until the frame is fixed.
A shattered jamb or a door split around the lock is carpenter work. The locksmith makes the house lock today, and the carpenter rebuilds the frame afterward. Once the new jamb is in, the strike gets set again in fresh wood.
Nothing was broken. Does that mean someone had a key?
Often it does, or a door was left unlocked. When there are no pry marks and no splintered wood, the likely answer is a key in circulation that you lost track of:
- A spare under the mat, in the planter, or on the nail in the carport
- Copies a previous owner or tenant never handed over
- A key ring that went missing a while back and never turned up
- A garage door remote taken from a car parked in the driveway
The fix for the first three is rekeying every exterior cylinder the same day, so every key that exists stops working at once. The garage remote is the odd one out. It gets cleared at the opener, which is not lock work, but the door from the garage into the house still needs to be on the new key.
Rekeying covers the whole outside of the house, not only the front door. Our page on rekeying the house covers how that visit goes. For which doors and locks belong in the count, the guide to getting a whole house on one key walks the house with you.
They came through a window or the sliding door. Do the door locks need changing?
No. If they came in through a window or a slider, the entry door locks did what they were supposed to do, and changing them buys nothing. The one exception is keys. If the keys that hang by the door are gone, the no-damage answer above applies and the house gets rekeyed.
Most sliding doors close with a latch that hooks a keeper in the frame. After a break-in through a slider, the latch is often bent, the keeper is pulled loose, or the panel was lifted off its track. The locksmith work there is two things, a latch that catches again and a secondary lock, usually a pin through both frames or a bolt at the bottom track, so the panel can’t be lifted or slid even if the latch gets defeated.
Broken glass is not locksmith work. A shattered slider panel or window goes to a glass shop, and the locksmith can make the rest of the opening secure in the meantime.
What about the door from the garage into the house?
Treat it as an exterior door, since it is one. It is often the door with a keyed knob and no deadbolt, and once the overhead door is up it is all that stands between the driveway and the kitchen. Adding a deadbolt to that door is the most common fix after a garage entry.
A knob latch alone is the weakest lock on most houses. A deadbolt throws a square bolt into the frame and stays there until someone turns it. If the door is a hollow interior-style slab, the kind some builders hung between the garage and the laundry room, a deadbolt still helps, and a solid door is the better long-term answer from a carpenter.
The overhead door and its opener are a garage door company’s work, not a locksmith’s.
What does securing a house after a break-in cost?
It depends on which way they came in. Rekeying runs $20 to $35 per cylinder plus a service call, the usual bill when nothing was broken. A deadbolt install with a new bore runs $90 to $180, which is the common fix for a garage entry door that never had one.
Strike repairs on a kicked door, slider latches and secondary locks get quoted on the phone, since the price board has no separate line for them. What moves that quote is how much solid wood is left, whether a temporary secure comes before the carpenter, and where on the mountain the house is. How a same-day break-in call is priced is on the emergency page. The carpenter’s work on a rebuilt jamb is a separate bill from a separate trade. The rest of what a rekey or a deadbolt costs around Marshall County is on the price page. The number quoted on the phone is the number on the invoice.
