The way in is not always the one you assume
In the Cusset co-ownerships and along the boulevard Laurent-Bonnevay, the flat door often holds while the cellar, the bike store or the service door has given way. Those accesses connect straight to the stairwell and close on an ordinary cylinder fitted thirty years ago. We inspect them as a matter of course, even when only the flat was gone through.
On the Croix-Luizet houses and the terraces of Maisons-Neuves, the back matters as much as the street front. A side gate, a yard door, an old wash-house opening onto the neighbour's garden: the sizes are old and the ironmongery original. Rebuilding the front entrance while leaving that access as it stands deals with half the problem.
Repair nothing before the police have been. Photograph the door from the landing side, the area around the keep, the splintered frame, and the walkway used to reach a door that does not face the street, as at Tonkin. Insurers ask for the crime reference, and a door already refitted makes the examination impossible. In the meantime, temporary securing closes the home again without wiping away the useful marks.
The frame comes before the lock
On the doors of Villeurbanne's 1950s and 1960s blocks it is almost never the cylinder that fails; it is the timber around the keep, levered out with a crowbar. The frame is often softwood, fixed into a plastered partition. Mounting a new lock on that without rebuilding the substrate hands the next person exactly the same purchase.
At Gratte-Ciel the frame is heavier and bedded into the original masonry, but the full-length keep and the hinges are as old as the building. The repair is done part by part, keeping the appearance seen from the landing, which belongs to the co-ownership. We list what comes off and what goes back on, item by item, in the quotation presented before work begins.
If keys disappeared during the break-in, the cylinder is no longer optional. That applies to the cellar and the bike store, and on the Croix-Luizet houses to the side gate and the yard door, if everything hung on one ring. Keep the parts we remove, whether a drilled cylinder or a torn faceplate: your insurer may want to see them, and they show what kind of attack took place.
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 Villeurbanne.