Lock Replacement in Norfolk, VA

Old houses, older hardware

By Census estimates, 42.5 percent of Norfolk's homes predate 1960. East Freemason keeps buildings from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, including the Moses Myers House. Ghent became a planned neighborhood in the late 1800s, and its National Register district counts 184 contributing buildings, many of them Queen Anne, Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival houses.

A door from those periods may be cut for a mortise lock, a body that sits in a rectangular pocket in the door's edge instead of being bored through its face. Replacing one comes down to two routes:

• a new mortise body sized to the existing pocket, which keeps the original look
• a conversion plate that covers the pocket and takes a standard deadbolt, which changes what shows on both faces

When a lock should be replaced

• the bolt no longer throws fully, even after the strike plate is realigned
• the cylinder spins in place or is cracked, or new keys can no longer be cut for it
• a mortise body has broken springs or levers and parts cannot be found
• the door has only a knob lock and you want a deadbolt added

If only the keys are a worry, lock rekeying is the narrower fix; for a lock that sticks but is whole, see lock repair.

Historic districts and visible hardware

Code of Virginia § 15.2-2306 lets a locality set historic districts by ordinance and require that alterations there be approved as architecturally compatible. In Norfolk the Architectural Review Board handles alterations in the Downtown, East Freemason, West Freemason, Ghent and Norfolk & Western Railroad districts, and West Freemason was the first Norfolk district listed on the National Register. If new exterior hardware will show from the street in one of these districts, ask the city whether it needs the board's approval first. This is general information, not legal advice.

What to send

• photos of the outside face, the inside face and the door edge where the faceplate sits
• the faceplate's height, and the distance from the door edge to the center of the knob or cylinder
• the neighborhood, and whether the house sits in a local historic district

See lock replacement for the work itself and Norfolk for the neighborhoods.