What does rekeying a whole house actually cover?
Every keyed cylinder on the outside of the house, re-pinned so one new key opens all of them and every old key stops working. That means the knob and the deadbolt on each entry door, the door in from the garage, and any side or carport door. The work is priced per cylinder, so the scope is a count of keyways rather than a count of doors. Our lock rekeying page covers what the visit itself looks like.
The word “door” is where most estimates go wrong. Ask someone how many locks their house has and they count the doors they walk through every day. The door off the laundry room that stays bolted year-round still has a keyway. So does the small lock on the storm door, and so does the walk-in door on the shop out back. A rekey that skips one of them leaves an old key working on that door.
How many lock cylinders does a typical house have?
More than it has doors, because most entry doors carry two. Count two for a door with a keyed knob and a deadbolt, one for a door with only one of them. Take the kind of brick ranch Albertville has a lot of, built somewhere between the 60s and the 90s, with a front door, a back door, a carport door and a door in from the garage. If every one has a knob and a deadbolt, that is eight cylinders on four doors.
Your house will have its own number, so go find it. Start at the front door, walk the outside of the house, and write down anything with a slot for a key.
- The front door. A knob, or a handleset with a thumb latch, has its own cylinder. The deadbolt above it has another.
- The door in from the garage. It gets skipped more than any other door, because nobody walks up to it from the yard. It still takes a key, and anyone who gets the overhead door open is standing right in front of it.
- The carport or side door. On a lot of ranches this is the door the family actually uses, while the front door opens for company and deliveries. It tends to have the most worn hardware on the house and the most copies of its key in circulation.
- The back door, plus any door off a sunroom or a porch that was closed in later. Additions come with whatever hardware the builder had on the truck, so these are the doors most likely to be a different brand.
- A sliding patio door. Many have a latch and no keyway at all. If yours has a keyed lock on the outside handle, it goes on the list.
- Deadbolts that need a key on the inside too. A double-cylinder deadbolt counts as two, and they tend to show up on doors with glass beside the lock.
Keep the paper. That count is what the price hangs on, and a count given on the phone is what lets the quote match the invoice.
Can locks from different brands all work on one key?
Only if they share a keyway. The keyway is the shape of the slot the key slides into, and lock makers each use their own. Two locks with the same keyway can be pinned to one key no matter when they were installed. Two locks with different keyways can’t share a key however the pins are set, so the odd lock gets a replacement cylinder or matching hardware instead. Which of those makes sense gets decided at the visit.
You can usually find out what you have before anyone arrives. The maker’s name is printed on the face of most locks, around the keyway or on the deadbolt’s outer ring, and it is often stamped on the bow of the key too, the flat part your fingers hold. Walk the doors a second time and read them off.
A house that has been lived in for thirty years often turns up a mix. The original builder hardware is still on the front, and the back door wears a replacement knob from whatever store was closest the week the old one quit. That is normal and nothing to fix before calling. It does change the number, because a door that can’t join the key costs a cylinder or a lockset rather than a rekey.
A smart deadbolt with a backup keyway counts like any other cylinder, and its keyway has a brand too. Whether to keep that keyed backup at all is covered in the smart lock and deadbolt guide.
Can the rest of the locks be matched to the key I already have?
Usually, yes. A locksmith can read the cuts on a key you already carry and pin the other cylinders to match it, so the key on your ring opens every door once the work is done. That is the right move when the only problem is too many keys. It is the wrong move when the key itself is the problem, after a move-in or a lost keyring, because matching every lock to a compromised key spreads it to every door.
If you’re not sure which side of that line you’re on, the rekey-or-replace guide sorts it out by what happened.
Two practical limits apply. The other locks have to share your key’s keyway, which puts you back at the brand names you read off the doors. And a key worn smooth from years in a pocket is a poor pattern to copy from. If yours has rounded shoulders and cuts you can barely feel, expect the locksmith to suggest starting from a fresh key rather than carrying the wear onto every lock in the house.
Can the storm door, the shed, and the gate padlock go on the same key?
Some of them can. A storm door handle with a keyed cylinder can join the house key if its keyway matches, but many storm door handle sets use small cylinders that were never meant to be re-pinned, and those get a new handle or stay on their own key. A shed or shop door with a regular knob or deadbolt joins like any house door. Padlocks are mostly replaced rather than rekeyed.
Out on the mountain, plenty of properties have a detached shop or a pole barn with its own walk-in door, and a pasture gate on a chain. Before putting those on the house key, think about who else opens them. A gate padlock that a neighbor or the person who cuts your hay needs to get through is a good reason to keep that lock on a separate key, so handing it out never means handing out the front door.
For the ones that should join the house:
- Some padlocks are made in the same keyways as house locks and can be pinned to the house key.
- Cheaper padlocks usually can’t be re-pinned at all, and the fix is a new padlock keyed to match, or a set of padlocks keyed alike to each other.
The keypad on an overhead garage door is a code rather than a cylinder, and it gets changed at the opener, so it never shows up in the rekey count.
What does a whole-house rekey cost around Albertville?
Rekeying runs $20 to $35 per cylinder plus a service call, and keying the whole house alike costs nothing extra. So the number is your walk-around count times that range, plus the one service call. Any lock that can’t join the keyway is quoted separately as a cylinder or hardware swap. The price page shows what a rekey costs per cylinder next to everything else we do.
The service call is the reason to count everything the first time. The storm door and the shed lock added on the same visit cost their cylinders. The same two locks remembered a month later cost their cylinders plus another trip.
How many copies of the new key should exist?
As few as the household needs, decided before the locksmith leaves. That usually means one for each adult who lives there and a single spare kept somewhere other than under the mat or on a nail by the back door. Anyone outside the house who truly needs to get in gets a copy only if there is no other way. Every copy past that is a key you may be rekeying around later.
Then settle where the spare lives. A fake rock by the steps is the first place anyone looks. A family member or neighbor in town who can drive it over is slower and a lot better.
The copy that leaves with a contractor or a dog walker is the one most likely to turn into the next rekey. The job ends, the key rarely comes back, and by the time the house sells nobody remembers who had it. For short-term access, a lockbox with a code you can change afterward does the same job without putting another key into the world.
Write down who holds each copy and when they got it, and keep the list with your count of cylinders. When someone on it stops needing access and the key doesn’t come back, rekey the cylinders that key could open.
