Livermore neighborhood · 24/7
Jensen Tract and Fifth Street: twenties bungalows, original hardware, and a garage out at the alley
The older grid south of downtown — Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Streets, small bungalows put up between the twenties and the forties on narrow lots, with the garage sitting at the back of the property facing the alley. Fifteen minutes from the Arroyo Road yard.
4.9 / 5· 194 reviews from Livermore and the Tri-Valley
~15 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The habit that runs the rest of this city does not describe these blocks. The garage here is a separate wooden building at the far end of the lot, opening onto the alley, and in most cases it is too small for a modern car and has become a place to keep a mower and a workbench. Nobody drives in and walks through into the kitchen, because there is nothing to walk through. People on Fifth Street still use their front door, and just as often the back porch door off the kitchen. A house lockout is $129 to $225, and on a lot this shape the technician starts at the door that can be opened without damage, which is usually that porch door rather than the street front.
What is on these doors is old and mostly worth keeping. Mortise cases sunk into the edge of the door instead of a cylinder bored through the face. Interior doors still hanging on warded locks a skeleton key will open, which is said plainly rather than talked around. Deadbolts that were cut in later by somebody in a decade of their choosing, at a height of their choosing, which is why the bolts on one street sit at five different levels while the knobs line up. A cylinder heavy with eighty years of grit is stripped, cleaned and repinned at $25 to $42 and will very likely outlive whatever would have replaced it. Where a case has cracked at the bolt, a lock replacement is $118 to $299 per door, fitted behind the original plate so the front of the house looks untouched from the sidewalk.
The alley garage is its own small problem. It closes with a hasp and a padlock, or an old rim lock with a key nobody has seen since the last owner, and it stands in weather all year with nothing between it and the summer sun. Padlocks seize while the key still turns freely and accomplishes nothing. Those come off and a shrouded body goes on, with the make named during the call so nobody meets an unfamiliar lock on their own fence. There is no opener and no keypad out there, and that is the honest picture of this neighborhood: fewer moving parts, older metal.
These houses change hands, and each sale arrives with a coffee tin of keys nobody can account for. A rekey at $25 to $42 per cylinder ends that. The realistic tally on a Jensen Tract lot is the front door, the back porch door, the alley garage and the side gate, and the whole list goes out as one figure with the $89 visit counted a single time across it. Houses held in one family for fifty years also tend to hold a safe, standing in a closet or bolted into a corner of the garage, with a dial and no combination written anywhere in the house. Opening one is $205 to $535 and the safe generally goes back into service the same afternoon.
Say whether the lock sits in the edge of the door or is bored through the face, because that decides what the technician loads before leaving the yard. Count the alley garage, the shed and the side gate before you call so one figure takes in the property. Alley numbering is thin, so give the nearest cross street.
Most requested in Jensen Tract & Fifth Street
FAQ
Asked about Jensen Tract & Fifth Street
Do you carry hardware for a 1930s bungalow, or is that a special order?+
Most of it rides on the van: pins and springs to repin an old cylinder, blanks that suit period keyways, and replacement rim and mortise sets. A cleaned and repinned original usually outlasts anything sold to replace it, so that is what gets offered first. A cracked case is the one that needs a part fetched, and you hear that on the call.
The garage is at the alley and has no number on it. How do you find me?+
Give the street address and the nearest cross street, then say which side of the alley the garage sits on and what color the doors are. Fifteen minutes is the drive; the last two are spent reading a lane that was never numbered. A porch light left on after dark saves both of us the guessing.
What do people here call about most?+
Rekeys after a sale, and padlocks on the alley garage that have seized in the sun while the key still turns. Lockouts on these lots usually end at the back porch door rather than the street front, because it is the one that opens without damage. Safes turn up too, in houses held by one family for fifty years.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say which of the three doors stopped you, hear the figure, and get inside
Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville and Sunol, 24/7, holidays included. The garage and its service door, the slab between the garage and the kitchen, the front door you never open, a shop unit, a car or a safe: one figure comes back with the $89 visit and the hour counted inside it. And you do not get left standing in an open doorway, because the visit ends with a key or a code that works.