Keys change hands faster than doors here
The border at the Pont Saint-Louis and the closeness of Monaco keep the population moving: cross-border workers, seasonal staff, small flats let by the month in the centre and in Carnolès. Every change of occupant brings back the same question, that of how many copies are still out there and in whose hands they are.
In that situation the cylinder is almost always enough. It is the part that carries the secret: one screw on the faceplate and it comes out, without touching the mechanism. A tenant moving on, a flat bought on the avenue Félix Faure, a key dropped on the promenade du Soleil — you change the barrel and nothing else.
The complete lock answers a different problem. 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 on site settles the matter, and a detailed quote is presented before anything is started. Replacing a whole mechanism because a key is missing would answer the symptom rather than the cause.
What an old door will really take
Old town buildings have no standard door. Solid timber leaves narrower than anything made today, uneven thicknesses, backset and spacing inherited from whoever hung them: a cylinder taken off a catalogue either sticks out or falls short. Too long, it offers a grip; too short, the key no longer drives the mechanism properly. The village houses at the top of the rue du Bréa raise the same problem, often from one floor to the next of the same stairwell.
So it is measured first, every time: thickness of the leaf, length on each side, hand of the door, condition of the keep in the frame. On the double-leaf landing doors of the former winter hotels in the centre, now converted into flats, there is also the semi-fixed leaf and its espagnolette bolt, rarely replaceable like for like.
Then there is the building itself. If your key also opens the hall, the bin store or the gate of a block in the Val de Menton, the replacement has to preserve that. It goes through the managing agent or the supplier who holds the master-key scheme. If you are renting, tell your landlord in writing before anything is changed.
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 Menton.