The Call That Came in Around 4 PM
Marisol called us on a Tuesday afternoon, sounding a little frazzled. She’d just finished a kitchen and entry remodel on her place off Dumetz Road, not far from El Caballero Country Club. The contractor had hung a gorgeous solid mahogany front door that morning — and then packed up his tools and left. No lock. No deadbolt. Just a beautiful door swinging on its hinges with nothing but a temporary chain holding it shut.
“I have to leave for a flight at 6 AM tomorrow,” she told us over the phone. “I cannot leave this house like this.”
We had a technician in the area finishing up a job near Warner Center, so he was at her place within 40 minutes. This is the kind of situation where isn’t a luxury — it’s the difference between sleeping in your own bed or driving to a hotel.
What We Found at the Door
Marisol’s new door was a 1-3/4″ thick solid mahogany slab, pre-bored with a 2-1/8″ hole for the lockset and a 1″ edge bore. Standard residential prep, which made our life easier. The strike plate area on the jamb, though, was still raw wood — no mortise cut, no reinforcement.
Our tech, Andre, walked her through the options sitting in his van:
The Three Choices We Offered
He laid out three real options on her kitchen counter — not a sales pitch, just hardware:
- A traditional Schlage B60N deadbolt paired with a matching keyed entry knob. Bulletproof reliability, easy to rekey down the road, around $180 installed.
- A Kwikset SmartCode 916 touchscreen deadbolt with a matching lever handle. No more keys for the dog walker, but battery-dependent.
- A Schlage Encode Wi-Fi deadbolt — she could lock the door from her phone in the Uber on the way to LAX.
Marisol travels a lot for work, so the Encode made sense for her life. She also wanted to give a temporary code to her sister, who’d be checking on the cat while she was in Lisbon.
The Actual Install
Here’s where it pays to hire someone who installs locks every single day. The door prep was good, but the jamb needed work. Andre:
- Mortised the jamb for a heavy-duty reinforced strike plate (3-inch screws into the framing stud, not just the jamb).
- Adjusted the latch backset — Marisol’s door came drilled for a 2-3/8″ backset and the original strike was off by about 3/16″. A common builder oversight.
- Set up the Encode with Marisol’s phone, paired it to her Wi-Fi, and created two access codes: one for her sister, one for the cleaning service that comes on Fridays.
- Tested the deadbolt 20+ times. A deadbolt that binds when you turn the key is the #1 reason locks fail early.
Total time on site: about an hour and fifteen minutes. She walked us to the door, locked it from her phone while standing on the porch, laughed, and said she was going to bed.
What Marisol’s Job Taught Us (Again)
We see this same story a few times a month across Woodland Hills — Topanga Canyon, Serrania, the streets up near Mulholland. Contractors do excellent work on doors but rarely include the lock. Their crews are framing, not locksmithing. Here are a few things worth knowing if you’re in the middle of a similar project:
Tip 1: Don’t Buy the Lock at Home Depot Before Calling Us
Half the locks we see homeowners buy off the shelf don’t match the door’s bore size, backset, or grade. Call first, then buy — or let us bring the hardware.
Tip 2: A Strike Plate With 1-Inch Screws Is Almost Useless
If a burglar kicks your door, the jamb splinters right where those short screws end. We use 3-inch screws that bite into the actual stud behind the jamb. It’s a $4 upgrade that changes the entire security profile of the door.
Tip 3: Smart Locks Need a Backup Plan
We always install smart deadbolts in a way that the physical key still works flawlessly. Batteries die. Wi-Fi routers reboot. You want a real key in the drawer, even if you never use it.
Tip 4: If Your Old Lock Was Sticking, It Probably Needed Replacement, Not Lubrication
We get a lot of lock repair in woodland hills calls that turn into installs because the existing hardware is just worn out. Pin tumblers wear down, springs weaken, and at some point a fresh lock is cheaper than three service calls.
If You’re Reading This With a New Door and No Lock
You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. We’ve handled lock installation Woodland Hills jobs in pretty much every neighborhood — from the flats near Ventura Boulevard to the hillside homes off Mulholland. Whatever brand of lock you’ve got your eye on, we’ve probably installed it a few hundred times.
Give us a call at (818) 398-9391 if you’d like us to come take a look, or browse the rest of our Woodland Hills locksmith services. Marisol made her flight, by the way — and the cat survived.
— Locksmith HQ Team
