Have it recorded before you have it repaired
Touch neither the door, nor the frame, nor the splinters on the floor before the police have looked at them. Photograph everything, including what looks incidental: the striking plate, the jamb, the tool marks, the position of the leaf. A door already patched up in a village courtyard cannot be examined afterwards, and the file is weaker for it.
Report the burglary to the police, then declare the loss to your insurer within the time limit your policy sets. Whether the forced door is a Montessuy flat door or a street door in the old village, keep the parts that come off — the drilled cylinder, the torn-out striking plate, the split section of jamb. They show what kind of attack it was, an insurer may ask to see them, and they disappear quickly once the repair starts.
Between the police visit and the permanent repair, temporary securing closes the home without erasing useful traces: a temporary lock, the striking plate made good, boarding over a broken glazed panel. At Saint-Clair, where homes at the foot of the slope open level onto a terrace, that opening is sometimes the one to close off first.
Fix the weak point, not only the lock
In many break-ins it is not the lock that gives way but the timber around the striking plate. The old frames of the village, often original, come apart under a crowbar long before the bolt moves. Fitting a new lock into a split jamb repairs half the problem and leaves the door no stronger than it was.
On the Montessuy estates the eye has to go down to the basement. Cellars, garage boxes and bike stores are visited more often than landings, and their doors have sometimes not changed since the block was built. Proper securing takes them in rather than stopping at the flat door. Tell the managing agent as well when a cellar door or a communal room has been forced: putting that right is no longer down to the occupier alone.
At Vassieux the way in tends to be round the back: garden gate, service door, patio window onto the walled garden. Reinforcing the front door of a house whose conservatory closes on a simple espagnolette moves the problem rather than solving it, and effort concentrated on one point is visible from outside.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our securing your home after a break-in page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Caluire-et-Cuire.