Locksmith Services in Rathwood, Mississauga

Rathwood was built out largely through the 1970s and into the 1980s, and the housing is the classic Mississauga suburban mix of that era: detached two storeys and backsplits on curving crescents, with a substantial number of townhouse complexes threaded between them.

The doors from that period are mostly steel skinned insulated units, which are structurally sound and will outlast their hardware comfortably. The hardware itself was builder grade when it went in, which means Grade 3 deadbolts and knob sets specified on cost rather than on performance.

Forty years later that hardware is past its service life. The symptoms are familiar: a deadbolt that needs the door pulled toward you before it will throw, a key that has to be jiggled, and a lock that has been getting stiffer for two winters. None of that means the door needs replacing. It means the lock does.

A large share of Rathwood housing is in townhouse condominium complexes, and that introduces the same ownership question that comes up in the towers, just at a smaller scale.

The unit entry door is normally yours. Common element doors, gates, the mail kiosk and any shared amenity door belong to the corporation. Where a complex has an attached or shared garage, the responsibility line can sit in a slightly surprising place, so it is worth checking your declaration rather than assuming.

The practical advice is the same as in a tower: for anything beyond your own unit door, a call to property management first is faster than a locksmith visit that turns out to need approval. For your own unit door, a rekey or a hardware upgrade is normally straightforward.

Two doors account for a disproportionate share of the problems in this kind of subdivision, and both are cheap to fix.

The first is the garage to house door. In an attached garage layout, once someone is inside the garage they are invisible from the street and from every neighbour. In most Rathwood houses that door still carries the builder's interior grade hardware, sometimes just a passage set. It should have a deadbolt.

The second is the sliding patio door onto the back yard. Lock yours and lift the moving panel hard. If it rises more than a few millimetres it can be lifted clear of the bottom rail while still locked, which on a yard backing onto a park or a walkway is the fastest way in. Anti lift blocks in the top track cost very little.

Neither of those is an expensive upgrade, and between them plus a reinforced front door strike they do more than any single new lock would.