Palo Alto neighborhood · 24/7
Crescent Park locksmith service on the streets by San Francisquito Creek and Rinconada Park, for houses that have not changed hands in a generation
The streets between University Avenue and the creek, with Rinconada Park and Lucie Stern at one edge: houses from the 1910s through the 1940s under old oaks, gates to back gardens, garages at the end of a long drive, and owners who have lived behind the same front door for thirty years.
4.9 / 5· 176 reviews from Palo Alto, Stanford & the towns beside them
22 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Crescent Park is twenty-two minutes by way of Middlefield Road and Embarcadero, and its calls are about houses that were last sold when the trees were half their size. Over those years keys went to a neighbor, a grown son, a piano tuner and a series of gardeners, and no one kept the list. The first visit is a count and a rekey at $27 to $45 per cylinder, with the garden gate and the garage side door in the count because they ride on the same ring. The front door carries a 1920s mortise set or a 1940s rim latch, and either is kept: the rim cylinder is rekeyed, the mortise case comes out through the edge to be cleaned and re-sprung, and only a case cracked at the bolt is replaced behind the original plate at $125 to $329.
Lockouts here start at the back of the house. The kitchen door onto the garden shuts behind someone cutting roses, the front is bolted from inside, and the gate to the drive has a drop latch that only lifts from the garden side. That is $129 to $219, picked open, gate first and then the door. Grown children arranging help for a parent ask about a keypad on the front, and the answer is the kitchen door instead: a smart lock there at $189 to $479 gives a caregiver a code that can be retired, while the front door keeps the face it was built with.
The streets are narrow under the canopy and the van stops at the curb. Houses near the creek have had water under the floor in a wet winter, and a low door whose hardware went damp once stays stiff for years; cleaning and rekeying comes before any talk of replacement. A bedroom safe with a combination nobody wrote anywhere is opened at $195 to $539. Evening calls carry $55 between 8pm and midnight and $90 overnight, inside the one figure said on the call.
Say whether the front door still has its original plate and knob, and send a photo of the inside face if you can. Count the garden gate and the garage side door; on these lots the total runs past what the porch suggests.
Nearby
The next district over, the same van and the same figures
FAQ
Asked about Crescent Park
Why is Crescent Park twenty-two minutes when Old Palo Alto is sixteen?+
The route runs out Embarcadero Road and then into narrow streets under a full canopy, where nothing moves quickly and house numbers sit behind hedges. Six minutes is the honest difference. If a porch light is on and the number can be read from the road, the last minute of that difference disappears.
Nobody has counted the keys to this house in thirty years. Where does a rekey start?+
With a walk round the property before anything is pinned: front door, kitchen door onto the garden, garden gate, garage side door and whatever the shed carries. The count sets the figure at $27 to $45 a cylinder. Everything then goes onto one key, and the keys still out in the neighborhood stop working.
The kitchen door shut behind me and the garden gate only lifts from the inside. What happens?+
The gate is dealt with first, without damage to it, and then the house door; both are opened rather than replaced. Where the fence makes the gate impossible, the technician comes round to the front instead. Say which side of the house you are standing on when you call, because it decides the order.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
One call, one figure, and the lock kept whole
Calls answered 24/7 across Palo Alto, Stanford and the towns beside them. The $89 service call, the labor and the parts are inside the figure said on the call, the lock is opened without drilling wherever it allows, and the receipt repeats the figure.