Parents in Shalimar call a locksmith for reasons that never make a service menu: a toddler who locked the bathroom from the inside, a patio door a four-year-old figured out, a teenager who loses keys every semester, a grandmother who cannot work the new smart lock, a rental on the bayou that needs new codes before Saturday's guests. This page is about that kind of lock work, written for the person who runs the household.
📞 Call (850) 740-4735✓ Local crew · ✓ Licensed & insured · ✓ 24/7, weekends & holidays
Every parent in Shalimar has either lived it or heard about it: a toddler pushes the button on the bathroom knob, the door clicks, and suddenly there is a two-year-old alone with a full tub and a cabinet of cleaning supplies. Interior privacy locks are built to be released from the outside, and most have a small hole in the outside knob that takes a flat emergency key or a narrow tool. If yours will not release, or the emergency key vanished years ago, call and we open the door without harming it.
The better fix is to change what the child can do. We replace privacy knobs on bathrooms and bedrooms with passage sets that close but do not lock, and we keep a privacy lock only on the parents' bathroom. For families who want a lock on the bathroom door but want to guarantee it opens from outside, we install privacy hardware with a proper keyed release and put the release key on a hook you will actually find at midnight.
Shalimar is a water town. Poquito Bayou, Garnier Bayou and Choctawhatchee Bay sit at the end of half the streets, and a lot of homes back onto a dock, a seawall, or a pool. The back door and the sliding patio door are the two openings a small child can reach and operate, and the factory latch on a slider is a thin hook a four-year-old can lift.
We make those doors child-resistant without making the house feel like a fortress. High-mounted flip latches or keyed locks go above adult shoulder height on patio and sliding doors, where a child cannot reach. Secondary bolts pin the slider to the frame so it cannot be lifted off the track. Door alarms chime when any exterior door opens, so you hear it from the kitchen. On homes with a pool, we look at every door and window that leads to the pool deck, not just the obvious one.
We walk the house with you before recommending anything, and we show you each opening a child could use. Parents are often surprised by the laundry-room door or the garage side door they never think about.
The modern Shalimar household has a lot of people coming through the door: a babysitter two afternoons a week, a grandmother visiting for a month, a dog walker, a cleaning service, a neighbor who checks on the house during a beach weekend, a teenager who is home from school before anyone else. Every one of them used to get a physical key or the location of the one under the flowerpot.
A keypad deadbolt replaces all of that. Each person gets a code that is theirs. You can see when a code was used, set the babysitter's code to work only on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and delete the dog walker's code the day you stop using the service. The kids never carry a key to lose on the bus, and there is no spare hidden outside for someone else to find.
We install mechanical keypads that need no batteries, electronic keypads, and app-connected smart locks, and we are honest about which ones survive a Gulf Coast summer. Whatever you choose keeps a physical key override, and we make sure that key is in your hand before we leave.
Not everyone in the house has strong hands or good eyesight. A deadbolt with a stiff cylinder, a knob that must be gripped and turned hard, or a smart lock that needs a phone app can shut out the very people who need to get in and out safely. For households with an aging parent or a family member with limited mobility, we install lever handles instead of knobs, deadbolts with large easy-turn thumbturns, and keypads with big backlit buttons and a simple four-digit code.
If a caregiver or home-health aide visits daily, a dedicated code for that person is both simpler and safer than a shared key.
Families arrive in Shalimar all year, often with orders for the base at the top of Eglin Parkway and often with a baby or a toddler in the car. The first week in a new house is chaos, and locks are easy to forget. We suggest doing three things before the boxes are unpacked.
Rekey every exterior door so no key from the previous owners, their relatives or their contractors still works. Check the nursery and bedroom doors for hardware that could lock a child in, and swap it if needed. Look at the patio door, the garage entry door and any door that opens to a yard near the water, and add a high latch or a keyed lock where a child could get out. All three fit in a single visit, and you never have to think about it again.
A teenager will lose a house key. It is not a character flaw; it is a phase. Each lost key means either a rekey or a spare key floating around somewhere with your address attached to a backpack. A keypad deadbolt ends the cycle: no key to lose, and if a code is shared with a friend, you change it in thirty seconds.
If your family prefers keys, we rekey every door to one key so there is exactly one thing to keep track of, cut extra copies so there is a spare at home, and can install a small combination lockbox in a discreet spot for the day the spare is lost too.
A car lockout with a child inside is the one situation where we ask you to call emergency services first, especially in Shalimar's heat, where a closed car becomes dangerous in minutes. Then call us. We open vehicle doors without damage and we treat a child-in-car call as the top priority on the board. Keep talking to the child through the glass while you wait, and if the child is in distress and help has not arrived, breaking a window away from the child is the right decision.
For everyday car lockouts, the toddler who pushed the lock button, the keys sitting on the seat in the parking lot off Eglin Parkway, we open the door and, if needed, make a new key on the spot.
Furnished rentals along Poquito Bayou, Old Ferry Road and the streets that reach the bay change guests every few days in season. Every turnover is a chance for a key to walk off, and a lost key means either a rekey or the quiet knowledge that a stranger can open the door. Keypad and smart locks solve it cleanly: each stay gets its own code that expires at checkout, the cleaner has a permanent code, and you manage all of it from your phone.
We install and configure those locks, set the cleaner's and maintenance codes, and make sure the mechanical override key is stored where the property manager can find it. For owners who want a spare key available on site, we install a wall-mounted lockbox rated for outdoor use so it does not seize in the salt air.
If you inherit a rental with an unknown number of keys in circulation, a rekey is the honest starting point before the first booking.
Inside the house, some doors and cabinets need real locks. We install keyed locks on medication closets, a home office with confidential paperwork, and the closet where the firearm safe lives. We service safe locks, replace lost safe keys, and change combinations on safes whose code was known to a previous owner. For families who want the safe openable by adults only, a keypad safe lock with a code that children do not know is a straightforward upgrade.
Under the mat, in the fake rock by the porch step, on top of the door frame, in the grill on the back patio. Every family in Shalimar has a hiding spot, and every hiding spot has been found by a curious child, a delivery driver, or a previous tenant who never forgot. If you need a spare outside the house, put it in a combination lockbox rated for outdoor use, mounted somewhere that is not visible from the street, and change the combination when someone who knew it moves on. Better still, replace the hidden key with a keypad code and stop hiding anything at all.
Inside the house, keep one clearly labeled ring with a key to every exterior door, the safe, and the shed, in a drawer the adults know and the children do not. It saves a call to us on the day the babysitter locks herself out on the porch.
We work the whole of Shalimar, from the streets between Eglin Parkway and Garnier Bayou to the neighborhoods that run down to Poquito Bayou and Shalimar Point, plus Cinco Bayou, Lake Lorraine, Longwood, Ocean City and the north end of Fort Walton Beach. It is a small area and we know it, which is why when a parent calls about a bathroom door on Old Ferry Road we do not need directions.
When you call, you reach a person. Tell us what is happening and who is in the house. We give you a straight quote, tell you honestly when we can be there, and confirm the number before starting. Every technician carries identification and arrives in a marked vehicle. When we finish, we test every lock with you and hand you every new key. We never keep one.
Lock work for families is less about hardware and more about the ten seconds when a door does or does not open. A child who cannot reach the bayou. A grandmother who can get in without a struggle. A babysitter with her own code. A rental guest who cannot come back after checkout. Those are the outcomes we are actually installing, and we would rather get them right for one Shalimar family than sell a hundred locks nobody needed.