Rekey or Replace? What to Do With the Locks After You Move In

You get the keys at closing and there is a small, easy-to-ignore question sitting on the doorstep: who else has a key to this house? The honest answer is that you have no idea. Previous owners keep spares. So do contractors, cleaners, dog walkers, the neighbour who watered the plants, and the teenager who moved out three years ago. None of them are villains. Keys just accumulate, and nobody keeps a list.

Rekeying, in plain terms

Inside a standard cylinder is a row of spring-loaded pin stacks. The cuts on your key push each stack to exactly the right height, the plug turns, the bolt moves. Rekeying swaps those pins for a different combination and cuts you a new key to match. The lock stays on the door. Every old key stops working the moment the job is done.

It is usually the right answer after a move, because it is quick, it is cheap relative to new hardware, and it solves the actual problem, unknown keys in circulation, without touching anything else.

When replacing is the better call

Replace instead of rekey when the lock itself is the problem. A cylinder that grinds, a latch you have to lift the door to engage, visible prying damage around the strike, or hardware old enough that parts are no longer made. Those are replacements. So is the case where you want a different grade of lock, a keypad, or a smart deadbolt.

There is one more reason people replace: keyed-alike. If your house currently takes three different keys for the front, back and garage, a locksmith can set every cylinder to one key. That can be done by rekeying when the locks are compatible, or by replacing them as a matched set when they are not.

Do not forget the doors nobody thinks about

The front door gets all the attention. The side gate, the garage service door, the basement walk-out and the shed are where people actually get in. So is the mailbox, which in a lot of older Fort Collins neighbourhoods still takes a key nobody has seen in years. Walk the perimeter once with a notepad before you call anyone. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between one visit and three.

A reasonable order of operations

Count the exterior doors. Check each one closes and locks without being lifted or shoved. Note anything that grinds, sticks or looks forced. Then decide, door by door, rekey or replace, and get a total on the phone before the visit, including the call-out, so there are no surprises on the driveway.

If you have just moved somewhere in Northern Colorado and want this done in one trip, Choice City Locksmith is a mobile Fort Collins locksmith covering Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Windsor, Wellington and Timnath. Call (970) 803-1100.