Locksmith service in Lauderdale Lakes, FL — incorporated in 1961 and, at roughly three and three-quarter square miles, the smallest footprint of any city around it. That compactness shows up in the housing: tight lots, short numbered avenues, houses sitting close to the street and closer to each other. Oriole Estates and the other detached blocks are one-story concrete block homes from the sixties and seventies where the roof, windows, and kitchen have all been redone but the original door openings never moved.
The signature move on a small lot with nowhere to build outward was enclosing the carport, and every one of those conversions created a new exterior door — usually the cheapest lockset on the shelf that week, almost never keyed to the front. We put that door on the house key along with the original front entry’s strike plate, which on this housing stock is nearly always the real weak point. The guide below covers what the job involves here and what it should cost.
The smallest footprint in central Broward
Lauderdale Lakes was incorporated on June 22, 1961, and it covers about three and three-quarter square miles — a smaller land area than any of the cities around it. Tamarac sits to the north, Lauderhill to the west and south, Oakland Park to the east and Fort Lauderdale to the southeast, and the city is threaded by Oakland Park Boulevard running east and west and State Road 7 running north and south. What that compact area produces is a residential pattern of tight lots, short blocks and numbered avenues where houses sit close to the street and closer still to each other.
Density changes locksmith work in ways that are not obvious from a map. Side yards are narrow, so side entry doors open almost directly onto a fence line, and driveways are short and usually hold more than one vehicle.
Oriole Estates and the detached-house blocks
Lauderdale Lakes is often described through its multi-family inventory, but the detached single-family sections are substantial, and Oriole Estates is the one most often named. These are the houses this article is about: one-story concrete block homes on modest lots, built through the sixties and into the seventies, with an attached carport or single garage and a straightforward front-and-back door arrangement. Roofs, windows and kitchens have been replaced, but the door openings are usually exactly where the builder put them.
That combination — updated everything, original openings — is why so many of these houses still carry entry hardware at the end of its life. A lockset can keep turning for fifty years while the jamb around it quietly gives up. The lock is rarely what fails first.
Carports that became rooms
The most distinctive residential feature of this city’s older housing is what owners did with the carport. On a small lot with no room to build outward, the carport is the easiest square footage to capture, and enclosing it has been standard practice here for decades. Every one of those conversions created a new exterior wall, and most created a new exterior door — a side entry, a door onto the driveway, or a door from the new room into the original garage space.
Conversion doors are consistently the weakest openings on the property. They were installed by whoever did the work, usually with the least expensive lockset on the shelf that week, in a frame set into a wall that was not originally structural. They are almost never keyed to the front door. A locksmith looks at the conversion door first, because that is where the mismatch between what the owner believes is secured and what actually is tends to live. Bringing that door up to the standard of the rest of the house usually means a proper deadbolt, a reinforced strike, and adding it to the house key.
Where the strike plate fails
The construction here follows the central Broward pattern: block walls, stucco outside, and a door frame set into the block opening. Original strike plates were flat, thin, and held by three-quarter-inch screws driven into soft jamb material rather than into anything structural. Under sustained force those screws pull out of the wood and the door fails at the frame while the lock itself remains intact and locked.
The fix is unglamorous and it is the highest-value change available in this housing stock: a reinforced strike, fastened with three-inch screws that reach past the jamb and into the framing behind it. A homeowner with budget for exactly one thing should spend it there rather than on a heavier deadbolt, because a heavy deadbolt anchored into filler is still anchored into filler.
Sliding doors, screen doors and the back of the lot
Nearly every house in these blocks has a sliding glass door at the rear, and on hardware of this age the original latch is a small hook engaging a keeper in the fixed frame. It holds the panel closed. It was not built to do more than that, and after decades the keeper loosens and the hook stops seating squarely. Replacing the latch, adding an auxiliary lock at the rail where the panel overlaps the frame, and correcting worn rollers so the panel closes to the same point every time are all standard work. A slider that has to be lifted to latch is a slider that ends up unlatched.
Screened enclosures and rear screen doors are the other overlooked opening. On short lots the enclosure door often sits only a few feet from the property line, and it is common to find it carrying a lever with no cylinder at all, or a cylinder on its own separate key that nobody in the household still has.
Rekeying a house that has turned over more than once
A rekey on a 2005 house is a matter of pinning cylinders. A rekey on a 1965 Lauderdale Lakes house may not be, because the cylinder in the front door can be a keyway that has not been manufactured in decades, from a lockset whose maker no longer supplies parts. Sometimes it can still be serviced; sometimes the correct recommendation is replacing that cylinder or lockset with current hardware and keying the whole property alike from there.
Rental turnover makes this a recurring job rather than a one-time one. Central Broward has a large share of tenanted single-family and small multi-family housing, and Lauderdale Lakes is well within that pattern. Collecting keys back from a departing tenant does not resolve anything, because there is no way to know how many copies were cut during the lease or who holds them. Rekeying between tenancies is what actually ends the prior occupant’s access, and it is far cheaper than replacing hardware. Owners with several addresses often want each property on its own key while keeping a single arrangement for their own access, which can be set up during the same visit.
Vehicles that live outdoors
Because so many carports here were enclosed and so many garages converted, the cars sit outside — in short driveways, on swales, along the numbered avenues. Years of sun and rain on an exposed door cylinder do exactly what you would expect: the wafers stiffen, grit works in, and the lock becomes hard to turn long before anyone notices, because nobody has used it since they got the fob.
That is where broken keys come from. The fob battery dies or the remote board fails, the owner reaches for the mechanical key for the first time in years, and the blade snaps off in a cylinder that was seized. Extracting the broken piece without damaging the wafers, then cleaning and servicing the cylinder, is a routine call and a common one on older vehicles parked outdoors.
Duplication, origination and the fob that finally died
Automotive key work divides cleanly by vehicle age. Older vehicles with purely mechanical keys can simply be cut. Vehicles from roughly 1998 onward carry a transponder chip that has to be programmed to that specific car before it will start, so cutting the blade is only part of the job. Push-to-start vehicles use a proximity fob that must be paired to the vehicle electronically.
The larger distinction is between duplication and origination. If a working key exists, duplication is straightforward. If every key is gone, the key has to be originated from the vehicle’s own data and then programmed, which takes longer and requires proof that the vehicle belongs to the person asking. Separately, an ignition that binds, turns roughly or only works at one angle on a high-mileage car is a worn cylinder, not a worn key, and cutting a fresh key to a worn ignition does not repair it.
Broward County Locksmith is licensed and insured and serves Lauderdale Lakes and Broward County. Call (954) 888-8800.
Recent Comments