Just moved in?
New Home — Residential Re-Key Service
You do not know how many keys to your new house exist. Nobody does. Rekeying every exterior door takes one visit and costs a fraction of new hardware.
The question nobody asks at closing
How Many Keys To Your House Are Out There?
The honest answer is that it is unknowable — which is exactly the problem.
Think about who has legitimately held a key to the house you just bought. The previous owners, obviously. Their adult children. A cleaner. A dog walker or a neighbour who watered the plants. The painters, the plumber and the flooring crew who worked on it before it went to market. The listing agent, and possibly a lockbox that a dozen buyer agents opened during showings.
Every one of those was completely legitimate at the time. None of them were tracked, none of them were logged, and there is no realistic way to collect them all now. The previous owner handing you three keys at the walkthrough is not evidence that three keys exist — it is evidence that they found three.
This is not a story about bad people. Almost nobody who has an old key to your house intends anything at all. But home security is not about intentions, it is about how many people could open your front door, and right now you genuinely do not know the number. Rekeying makes it one: you.
Rekey vs replace
What Rekeying Actually Is
It is a change to the inside of the lock you already own, not a new lock.
The mechanism
Inside a pin tumbler cylinder is a row of spring-loaded pin stacks. The correct key lifts each stack to exactly the right height so the plug can turn. Rekeying swaps those pins for a different combination of heights, so a different key turns it and the old one does not.
What stays
Your existing hardware — the deadbolt, the handle, the finish, the fit in the door. Nothing is removed from the door face, nothing is redrilled, and nothing about the look of your entryway changes.
What changes
Only the key. Every key cut to the old combination stops working the moment we finish, whether we know about it or not. That is the entire point.
Keyed alike
The usual request: every exterior cylinder pinned to the same new combination so one key runs the front, back, side and garage doors. Far easier to live with than a keyring of five.
Time on site
A typical Whitby home with three or four exterior cylinders is comfortably under an hour. There is no waiting for parts, because we are not fitting parts.
Cost
A fraction of replacing the same number of locks, because you are paying for labour and a set of pins rather than for hardware. It is the cheapest genuine security improvement available to a new homeowner.
When to replace instead
Rekeying Is Usually Right. Sometimes It Is Not.
We would rather tell you this up front than have you find out afterwards. There are situations where rekeying an existing cylinder is the wrong call, and a locksmith who never mentions them is not being straight with you.
If the hardware is genuinely worn out — the key turns loosely, the latch does not retract fully, the plug wobbles — rekeying puts a fresh combination into a mechanism that is already failing. You will be calling somebody back within a year.
If the lock is a builder-grade knobset being asked to do a deadbolt’s job, rekeying preserves a weakness rather than fixing it. And if you want a real security upgrade, a smart lock, or matching hardware across a renovated house, replacement is the honest answer.
Everywhere else — which is the large majority of new-home visits — rekeying is faster, cheaper and gives you exactly the same outcome.
Replace rather than rekey when…
✓ The key already turns loosely or needs jiggling.
✓ The latch does not retract fully every time.
✓ The finish has corroded through or the plug wobbles.
✓ It is a knobset with no deadbolt beside it.
✓ You want a higher grade, or a smart lock.
✓ The cylinders are mismatched brands and cannot be keyed alike.
We tell you which category you are in before we start, not on the invoice.
The forgotten doors
The Doors New Owners Always Miss
People rekey the front door and stop. The front door is almost never the way in.
The garage side entry is the classic. It is usually the cheapest lock on the property, it opens into an unobserved space, and once someone is inside the garage they are working on the door into the house out of sight of the street — and that door is very often a hollow interior door with a privacy handle on it.
Then there is the basement walk-out, the door from a screened porch, the shed with the ladder and the tools in it, and the mailbox. On a move-in visit we rekey or address all of them, because that is where the actual weakness sits. It costs very little extra while we are already on site and it is the difference between a rekey and a genuine security reset.
Move-in checklist
Six Things To Do In Your First Week
01
Rekey every exterior cylinder
Front, back, side, garage. Keyed alike so one key runs the house.
02
Fix the strike plates
A box strike and three-inch screws into the stud behind the frame. Ten minutes, and it does more than any lock upgrade.
03
Change every smart-lock code
Including the installer or builder code, which is very often still the factory default.
04
Check the garage remote
Old remotes and keypad codes travel with previous owners. Both can be reset in minutes.
05
Test every window lock
Especially basement and ground-floor rear windows. They are frequently painted open or simply broken.
06
Find the patio door pin
Most sliding doors have a secondary pin or bar option. Most owners have never used it.
New Build? You Still Need This.
A brand-new house feels like a clean slate, and it is not. During construction the property is typically on a builder’s key or a construction master, and that key is held by a large number of trades across an entire subdivision. Across the newer streets in Taunton, Williamsburg and north Brooklin this is the normal state of affairs.
Many builders use a system where the first turn of the homeowner key cancels the construction key. That is genuinely useful — but only if it was set up correctly, only if it was actually triggered, and only on the doors it was fitted to. Side and garage entries are frequently outside the system.
It takes about two minutes to check whether yours works. If it does not, or nobody can tell you, rekey it.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does rekeying take?
A typical Whitby home with three or four exterior cylinders takes well under an hour. There are no parts to order because we are changing the pins in the locks you already have.
Can every door use the same key?
Usually yes. Keyed-alike is the standard request and it works as long as the cylinders are compatible brands. Where one is not, we will tell you and offer the options.
Is rekeying as secure as a new lock?
For the question you are actually asking — who can open my door — yes, identically. The old keys stop working either way. A new lock only adds security if the new one is a higher grade than the old one.
Should I do it before or after moving day?
Ideally on or just after possession day, before the boxes arrive. If the movers still have to come and go, doing it the same evening is fine.
What about the garage door opener?
Old remotes and keypad codes stay with whoever has them. Both can be reset from the opener unit itself in a few minutes, and we will show you how while we are there.
My house is brand new. Do I really need it?
Usually yes. Construction keys are held by many trades across a subdivision. Some builders use a cancelling system, but it is often not fitted to every door and is sometimes never triggered.
Beyond moving day
Every Other Reason To Rekey
Moving in is the obvious one. It is not the most common one.
A lost keyring. The one that had the house key and something identifying on it — a fob with an address, a work pass, a car key that tells anyone who finds it exactly which driveway to look in. The keys themselves are replaceable; the connection between the key and the address is what matters, and rekeying severs it.
The end of a relationship. Not an accusation, just arithmetic. Somebody who used to live there has a working key, and possibly gave a spare to a family member at some point. Rekeying is the calm, undramatic way to close that, and it costs less than an evening out.
After a renovation. Contractors, subtrades, delivery crews and inspectors all need access while work is running, and keys get copied and passed around without anyone tracking it. The end of a renovation is the natural moment to reset.
A change of tenant. Non-negotiable for landlords. Keys are almost never all returned and copies are almost never disclosed — not out of malice, just because nobody remembers the spare they cut two years ago. See our rental property service.
A break-in or attempted entry. If a door was forced or a window opened, rekeying is part of the repair, not an optional extra. You have no way of knowing whether keys were taken while somebody was inside.
Too many keys, too little sense. The house with four different keys for four exterior doors, one of which nobody can identify any more. Rekeying everything to one combination is as much a quality-of-life fix as a security one.
Service area
We Come To You
We are a mobile service — there is no shop counter to drive to. Whitby is our home base, and we cover Durham Region and the eastern GTA, day and night.
Not on the list? If you are anywhere in Durham Region, call and ask.
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Locked Out? We Answer The Phone.
24/7 mobile locksmith service across Whitby, Brooklin and Durham Region. Real prices on the phone, a marked vehicle at your door, and a written invoice when we are done.