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How many people still have a key to your front door?
You cannot answer that. Nobody in Mary Esther can. This is a town people move through constantly, and every key ever cut for that door is still out there. Rekeying makes all of them stop working.
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Rekey my locks
Tell us how many doors. Calling is faster.
What rekeying actually is
People picture a locksmith unbolting the lock and screwing on a new one. That is replacement, and it is usually the wrong job. Rekeying happens inside the lock you own.
A pin-tumbler cylinder is a rotating core — the plug — inside a fixed housing, with five or six chambers drilled through both. Each holds a spring, a driver pin, and a bottom pin riding on the key. With no key in, springs push the drivers down across the seam between plug and housing. That seam is the shear line, and a pin crossing it is a bolt through a hinge. The right key works because every cut lifts its bottom pin flush with the shear line — every chamber clears at once, and the plug turns.
To rekey, we pull the cylinder, swap the bottom pin stack for a new bitting, and cut a key to match. Springs, housing, bolt and finish all stay. But the old key now lifts every pin to the wrong height — some proud of the shear line, some short — and the plug will not turn.
The old key is not deactivated in software. It is mechanically incapable of opening that door.
Who still has a key
The most common call we get in 32569.
Hurlburt Field sits immediately west of us, and that is why this town moves the way it does. People PCS in and PCS out. Leases end mid-year. Houses sell to the next family arriving.
So count the keys. The previous tenant had two. Their brother-in-law had one for the week he helped them move. A property manager kept a copy, then left the company years ago and nobody asked for it back. The contractor who redid the bathroom has a coffee can of keys in his truck he could not identify if you paid him. The seller handed you four at closing and swore that was all of them — and he was wrong, because he could not account for whoever lived here before him.
None of them are criminals; that is the point. Rekeying closes the loop — every exterior lock re-pinned in one visit, and the count goes back to the keys in your hand.
Rekey or replace?
Rekey in almost every case.
Rekey — nearly always
Lock turns smoothly, bolt throws fully? Nothing is wrong with it — it has the wrong key.
Replace — hardware failing
A plug that binds, a bolt that will not throw full length. New pins do not fix mechanical faults.
Replace — you want a grade
ANSI/BHMA grades locks 1 to 3. Nearly every builder-hung deadbolt is Grade 3, the bottom. Grade 1 is commercial-duty — more force before it gives.
Replace — salt got it
Sound-side cylinders get eaten from the inside: chambers pit, springs rust. Re-pinning one is new pins in a ruined hole.
One key. Not four.
Look at the ring in your pocket. Front door, back door, Florida room, shed — four keys for one house, because the doors were hung at different times by people who grabbed whatever was on the shelf.
Rekeying lets us pin every cylinder on the property to the same bitting. One key opens all of it, dock-box padlock included. Not less secure: identical locks, cut to a shared code. Want the shed kept separate? We pin that one different on purpose.
What the Sound does
Salt air is a slow, patient vandal. The order of failure is consistent enough that we can usually guess what you are calling about:
- Screen-porch and Florida-room latches go first — thin, cheap, exposed.
- Shed and dock-box padlocks next — two seasons and they are paperweights.
- Sliders seize as track and rollers pack with salt grit and sand.
- Exterior deadbolts corrode from the inside out. The face still looks fine.
Dry lubricant, never wet oil. Oil in a keyway is flypaper — it holds salt and sand against the pins and becomes a grinding paste. Use graphite or a PTFE dry film.
Upgrades actually worth it
Most security money goes to the wrong part of the door.
- Three-inch screws through the strike plate The cheapest real upgrade there is. The screws in the box bite three quarters of an inch — into door trim, a thin board tacked to the frame. Nobody picks a residential door; they kick it. The trim splits, the plate leaves with it, and the deadbolt is still locked in a doorway no longer attached to the house. Three-inch screws reach the stud.
- A deadbolt with a full one-inch throw Measure yours; plenty of what gets hung barely crosses the gap. An inch of steel driven into the frame is what makes the long screws worth anything.
- Reinforce the frame, not just the lock Both of the above are one idea: the lock is almost never the weak point. The jamb is.
- Smart locks — the honest take Genuinely good at what this town needs: revocable codes. A tenant leaves, you delete the code — no copies exist because no metal existed. But it is only as strong as the deadbolt behind it, and a dead battery is a lockout.
Landlords and turnover
Rekey between every tenant — not because a departing tenant is a threat, but because the keys they hand back are not the keys that exist. A code-based lock pays for itself fast in a town that moves like this: every turnover you skip a key handoff, a key return, a lost-key charge and a trip out. The door still has to be right behind it — real deadbolt, one-inch throw, long screws.
Someone left your shop on bad terms? Same job, different door: commercial locksmith work. Locked out right now? That is an emergency lockout, not a rekey. Here is the service area.
Rekey questions we get
How long does a rekey take?
Minutes per cylinder, at your door. We work out of the pinning kit in the truck — nothing goes to a shop.
Will the old key still open anything afterward?
No. Its cuts lift the new pins to the wrong heights, they straddle the shear line, and the plug is mechanically locked.
Can you make all my doors take one key?
Yes — a key-alike set. Every re-pinnable cylinder gets the same bitting, and one key opens all of them.
The seller gave me all the keys. Do I still need a rekey?
Yes, and he was not lying. He gave you every key he knew about — not the copies made by whoever lived there before him.
My deadbolt is stiff and gritty. Rekey or replace?
Dirt and dry pins: a rekey plus dry lubricant brings it back. Years of salt pits the chambers and rusts the springs — pinning a corroded cylinder wastes your money. We pull it and tell you first.
Stop wondering who has a key.
One visit, same locks, a key that is genuinely yours. The local line rings a locksmith in Mary Esther.
(850) 949-0053