A rental stock that keeps changing hands
The border runs at the end of the street, and it shows in the flats. Studios and one-bedroom units change occupant from one season to the next, between staff working in Monaco, seasonal workers and owners taking their property back. Every handover raises the same question: how many copies were cut, and who still holds them. A cylinder changed on the day the keys are handed over closes the matter for good.
In that situation the cylinder is nearly always enough. It is the part that carries the secret: one screw on the faceplate and it slides out, with the mechanism left untouched. A tenant leaving a block in Les Ligures, a studio bought in Moneghetti, a keyring dropped in a public lift — you change the barrel and nothing else.
A complete lock answers a fault, not a missing key. You come to it when the bolt no longer throws cleanly, when the linkage of a multipoint lock is bent, when the faceplate has been forced. The assessment happens at the door and the itemised quote comes before the first tool is out. A door that has been catching for months usually needs adjusting rather than buying.
What a pre-war door will actually take
The older buildings here know nothing of standard sizes. Leaves narrower than anything sold today, uneven thicknesses, backset and centres inherited from whoever hung the door: a cylinder taken off a catalogue either protrudes or falls short. Too long, it offers a grip; too short, the key no longer drives the mechanism properly.
So it gets measured every time, and from one floor to the next in the same Moneghetti stairwell the figures change. On the double-leaf landing doors of the former winter palaces along the boulevard de la République there is also the semi-fixed leaf and its espagnolette, rarely replaceable like for like.
The building has a say too. If your key also opens the lower hall, the bin store or the underground garage, the replacement has to preserve that, which means going through the master-key scheme held by the managing agent. If you rent, tell your landlord in writing before anything is changed. In these buildings one keyring can drive four different locks.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our lock and cylinder replacement page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Beausoleil.