Mar Vista Locksmith
Most Mar Vista houses were built right after the war, and a lot of their locks are just as old. We bring them up to date without changing how your home looks.
Working in Mar Vista
Mar Vista is a neighborhood of modest single-family houses, most from the 1940s and 1950s, on flat streets that climb gently toward Mar Vista Hill. Grand View Boulevard and Centinela Avenue cut through it, and Venice and Palms Boulevards are lined with apartment buildings. The Mar Vista Tract, a group of modernist homes designed by Gregory Ain, is a protected historic district where owners care a lot about keeping the original look. Families, renters and people who have owned the same house for forty years live side by side. The Sunday farmers market brings out the whole neighborhood.
The locks we meet here
Many houses here still have the knob lock they were built with, sometimes with no deadbolt at all, or a deadbolt someone added later that takes a different key. The side gate usually has a padlock or a gate latch with its own key. After seventy years the pins inside are worn and keys stick. A common visit puts the whole house on one key, adds a real deadbolt where there was only a knob, and fits a gate lock that matches. In the Ain houses we lean on rekeying, because it changes the key without changing anything you can see from the street.
How fast we get there
Mar Vista is about 13 miles from our Van Nuys base, so allow 35–60 minutes. Heavy traffic on the 405 or the canyon roads can stretch that, and you get the real ETA along with the price before we leave. Text (657) 478-8248 with your ZIP, a photo of the lock and a word about the door.
What people in Mar Vista call us for
Common questions
My house only has a knob lock on the front door. Is that a problem?
A knob lock alone is easy to force, so we recommend adding a deadbolt. We fit one that suits your door, set it with a reinforced strike, and key it to match your knob. You end up with one key and a much stronger front door.
I live in the Mar Vista Tract. Can you change my locks without changing how the door looks?
Yes. Rekeying swaps the pins inside the cylinder and leaves the hardware exactly as it is. If a lock needs replacing, we talk with you about a model that keeps the original style before we do anything.
Can my side gate use the same key as my house?
Usually, yes. If the gate has a keyed lock, we rekey it to your house key. If it only has a latch or a padlock, we can fit a gate lock and match it to the rest of the house.