Issues to grasp In advance of Switching Locks on the Doorway

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Rekey when you move.
When a new house is under construction, a variety of people—including subcontractors, inspectors, and real estate agents—will have keys to the door. A new homeowner won’t want keys in the hands of all those people, so the lock should be rekeyed. This is typically a part of the sales process (and the responsibility of the builder), although the buyer’s real estate agent is the one who makes sure it’s complete before closing. Rekeying is a good idea any time you move into a different home because you never know how many keys are floating around. When you’re buying an existing house, you’re on the hook for having the locks rekeyed. If you’re renting, check your lease agreement for regulations about changing locks on a door—you may be required to give the landlord a key to the newly rekeyed lock.



3. Replace damaged locks.
Like all mechanisms with moving parts, a lock eventually wears out. Jamming the wrong key into a lock or just the repetitive movement of locking and unlocking the door over time can damage the internal mechanism, resulting in a key that sticks or is difficult to turn. Rekeying a damaged or worn lock won’t solve the issue, because it can’t make a worn-out lock new again—preexisting problems with the locking mechanism will still be there. In this situation, it’s best to bite the bullet and replace the entire lock.

7 Things to Know Before Changing Locks on a Door
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4. Change the locks when your keys have been lost or stolen.
If your house keys are ever stolen, one of your first orders of business is changing the locks on your doors so no one can gain access to your home. Rekeying is the method of choice in this situation, just as it would be if a family member misplaced a key or otherwise lost track of it. The one instance when you’d find out this here need to replace the entire lock is if the only key to the lock went missing. The rekeying process requires the use of an original key; if you don’t have one you’ll have to replace the entire lock.

5. Consider the convenience of a single key.
It’s annoying to fumble through half a dozen keys because the front door key doesn’t fit the backdoor or the side door locks and vice versa. The convenience of having a single key fit all the locks on your house (including the garage) can be accomplished by rekeying—as long as you have the same brand of locks on all the doors. Rekeying techniques (and key styles) vary from one manufacturer to another. For example, if all the locks on your house are Schlage, you can rekey all of them to fit the same key. If the locks are of various brands, you’ll need to replace some to have all rekeyed to accept a single key.