Three kinds of calls land under lock installation, and they aren't the same job. Someone just closed on new construction and wants the builder-grade hardware swapped for something they picked out themselves. Someone converted a garage, a shed, or a Florida room into livable space and the door leading into it never had real hardware to begin with. Someone added a security door, a gate, or an interior office door and needs a lock mounted where there's currently just a hole, or nothing at all.
Call (407) 792-1378What ties those together is that installing a lock correctly is a measuring problem before it's a mechanical one. Backset, bore diameter, door thickness, and strike alignment decide whether the hardware you bought actually fits the door in front of it. Get one of those wrong and the lock still turns, still looks installed, and still binds, drags, or fails to latch within a few months.
Builder grade isn't an insult, it's a spec. Production homebuilders buy hardware in volume at whatever meets code and looks acceptable on a walkthrough — typically ANSI/BHMA Grade 3, the lowest residential grade, on both the knob or lever and the deadbolt. The faceplates are thin, the strike box is small stamped metal instead of a reinforced box strike, and the mounting screws are often shorter than what the door and jamb can really use. None of that fails an inspection. It just means the hardware is built to a price, not to outlast the house.
Swapping it out isn't about vanity. A homeowner who wants a heavier-grade lever set, a smoother deadbolt, or matching finishes throughout the house is also, usually without asking for it, getting a lock body with a longer bolt throw and thicker strike plate than what shipped from the factory.
The backset is the distance from the edge of the door to the center of the bore hole — almost always 2-3/8" or 2-3/4" on residential doors, and the two are not interchangeable without adapting the lock or redrilling the door. The bore itself is typically a 2-1/8" hole through the face of the door for the lock body, with a smaller crossbore on the edge for the latch or bolt. A lock spec'd for one backset mounted against a door drilled for the other sits crooked, and the latch tongue won't center in the strike no matter how the plate is shimmed.
Door thickness matters just as much and gets overlooked more often. Standard interior doors run 1-3/8" thick; exterior doors are usually 1-3/4". A deadbolt sized for an exterior door, sold as a universal fit, still needs its cylinder-to-thumbturn spindle cut or adjusted to the actual thickness in front of it, or the assembly won't seat flush on both faces.
New construction doors arrive pre-bored from the factory, which sounds like it removes the guesswork — and mostly it does, until the trades on site swap doors between openings, order the wrong backset for a subset of units, or hang a door that was bored for a knob-in-lever combo when the plan called for a separate deadbolt. None of that shows up on a walkthrough. It shows up when the new deadbolt doesn't seat, or seats with the bolt hitting wood instead of the strike opening.
Converted spaces are the other common call — a Florida room turned into a bedroom, a shed turned into a home office, an interior pocket door that needs to actually lock for the first time. These jobs start from a bare door with no bore at all, which means picking backset and bore size based on the door's actual thickness and swing rather than matching existing hardware. It's more work than a swap, but it also means there's no old, wrong prep to correct for first.
A lock can be bored and mounted perfectly and still fail at the strike plate. The strike has to line up with the latch or bolt both horizontally and vertically, and doors settle over time — humidity swelling the slab, hinges sagging under weight, a house shifting slightly on its foundation. On a fresh install, the strike gets set to match the door as it sits that day, not to a factory template. Deep-throw mortise strikes and adjustable lip strikes exist specifically to correct for a door that isn't perfectly square, which in an older Orlando home is closer to normal than the exception.
Lock installation done right starts with a tape measure, not a catalog. Call (407) 792-1378 with the door's location and age, and whether it currently has a lock at all, and the backset, bore, and strike work gets sorted out before hardware ever gets mounted.
← All Residential Locksmith servicesMost residential locks are sized for the two common backsets and standard bore, so they'll physically fit a lot of doors. Whether it fits your door well depends on its actual thickness, backset, and how square the opening still is — worth confirming before hardware is purchased rather than after.
If the bore is already correctly sized and positioned, a new lock body can often go into the existing prep. If the backset or bore doesn't match what's being installed, the door needs to be redrilled or a different lock chosen.
It's not unsafe in the sense of being defective — it meets code. It's just the minimum grade, with a shorter bolt throw and lighter strike than Grade 1 or Grade 2 hardware, which is why it's often the first thing homeowners upgrade after moving in.
Searching locksmith near me in Orlando for a house lockout? We are mobile across metro Orlando and quote the price before we come out. Call (407) 792-1378.
ZIP codes we cover in Orlando: 32801, 32803, 32804, 32805, 32806, 32807, 32808, 32809, 32810, 32811, 32812, 32814, 32817, 32818, 32819, 32820, 32821, 32822, 32824, 32825. City services: Orlando Official Website.
