Home Rekeying in Portland, OR
When you move in, every key that ever existed is still out there. Rekeying is the cheapest hour you will ever spend on your house — and we do homes only, by appointment, in daylight.
You Don't Know How Many Keys Exist
Nobody hands you a list. There is the previous owner and their adult children, the cleaner, the dog walker, the contractor who did the bathroom in 2019, the neighbor who watered the plants, and whoever the realtor lent a key to during viewings. None of those people are villains and almost none of them will ever come back — but you cannot know that, and you cannot un-know that you don't. Rekeying is not about suspicion. It is about being the first person in the history of the house who can actually answer the question.
What We Do For Houses
Homes only. That focus is why we can quote most jobs on the phone.
◆ One key for every exterior door ✓ Appointments, not windows ☎ Quoted on the phone
What Actually Happens To Your Locks
It is a smaller job than most people expect, which is exactly why it is worth doing.
The Lock Stays On The Door
We take out the cylinder — the barrel the key goes into — and leave your handles, deadbolts and paintwork alone.
The Pins Are Changed
Inside the cylinder is a stack of small pins set to your old key's shape. We swap them for a new combination.
Every Old Key Stops Working
Instantly and permanently. There is no master copy, no override, and nothing for a former keyholder to try.
You Get One Key For Everything
Front, back, side and garage rekeyed to match, so the ring in your pocket has one house key on it rather than four.
One Locksmith, Booked Appointments, Daylight Only
Pellerin is deliberately small. There is no overnight rota and no emergency line, because the work we do is not an emergency — it is the thing you schedule for the week after you get the keys. That choice is what makes the rest possible: the person who quotes your job is the person who turns up, appointments are a named hour rather than a four-hour window, and nobody is rushing to the next call. If you are locked out right now, an emergency locksmith will serve you far better than we will, and we will happily tell you that on the phone.
Where Break-Ins Actually Happen
Portland housing stock has a few consistent weak points, and they are rarely the front door everyone worries about.
The Back Slider
Original aluminum sliders lift out of the track in seconds. A secondary lock or a track bar is the single best-value fix in most houses.
The Garage Side Door
Often the oldest lock on the property, frequently hollow-core, and it opens into a space with your tools and a door to the house.
Basement Windows
Old sash catches that have been painted over for decades and no longer engage at all, on the least overlooked side of the house.
The Hidden Key
Under the mat, in the fake rock, on the ledge above the door. Every burglar knows all three, and it defeats every lock you own.
Rekeying, Answered Plainly
How much does it cost to rekey a house?
Most Portland houses have three to five exterior locks, and rekeying all of them to a single key typically comes to well under the price of replacing two locks. We quote from the number of doors and the age of the hardware on the phone, and that number holds unless we find something genuinely different when we arrive — a cylinder that has been drilled, or a lock that turns out to be a brand with no available pinning kit. In nine years that has happened a handful of times, and we call it before doing the work.
Is rekeying as secure as fitting new locks?
For the specific problem of keys existing that you do not control, yes — identically so. A rekeyed cylinder is a new key combination, and every previous key is dead the moment we finish. What rekeying does not do is upgrade a weak lock: if your deadbolt is a builder-grade unit that a determined person could defeat, rekeying it gives you a secure key on an insecure lock. We will tell you which of those two problems you actually have.
Can you make all my doors use one key?
Yes, and it is the part people are most pleased with afterwards. As long as the cylinders share a keyway — which most residential locks in a single house do — we pin them to the same combination so the front, back, side and garage doors all take one key. If one door is an oddity that cannot join the set, we will tell you before starting and give you the option of replacing just that cylinder.
Do you do emergency lockouts?
No, and that is deliberate rather than a gap. We run appointments in daylight so that the person who quoted your job is the one who arrives and nobody is rushing off to the next call. If you are locked out right now, a dedicated 24-hour locksmith will be with you far faster than we could, and we would rather say that than take the booking.
How long does it take?
About an hour for a typical four-door house, and we do it while you are there rather than needing the place to yourself. Nothing is drilled, no new holes are made and no filler needs to dry — the locks come off the door, the cylinders are repinned on a mat on your porch, and they go back on. You will test every door with the new key before we leave.
Book An Hour
Tell us how many exterior doors and roughly when you moved in. We will come back with a firm price and the hours we have free.
- Visit usPortland, OR 97214
- Call us(503) 555-0128
- Email ushello@pellerinhomelocks.com