Burglary Damage Repair in Newmarket: Secure Tonight, Repair Properly After

If you have just come home to a forced door, the practical advice is short. Do not go inside if there is any chance someone is still in the house. Call the police and let them attend first. Do not tidy up or repair anything until they have released the scene, and photograph everything before it is touched, because you will need those photos later.

Then there is the part nobody puts on a services page: you want the house to feel like yours again tonight, and no amount of insurance paperwork addresses that. That is a completely reasonable thing to want, and it is usually achievable. In most of the break-ins we attend in Newmarket the physical damage is confined to one door or one window frame, and a property can be made properly secure within a few hours of the police finishing.

We have been doing this work around Newmarket since 2000, across the older Main Street South homes, the 1980s and 1990s subdivisions in Glenway and Stonehaven, the newer builds toward East Gwillimbury, and small businesses along Davis Drive and Mulock Drive. What follows is what actually happens, in what order, and what it typically costs.

Making the property secure the same day

The goal on the first visit is simple: every opening closes, locks and holds by the time we leave.

Once police have released the scene, we work through the property opening by opening. Any door that was forced gets assessed for whether it can be made to latch and lock as it stands, or whether it needs temporary hardware or boarding until a permanent repair. Any lock that was defeated, drilled, snapped or that the intruder may have taken a key to gets its cylinder replaced or rekeyed, not just inspected.

That last point matters more than people expect. If a set of house keys was taken, or a handbag with keys in it, then every lock those keys operated is now an open door regardless of whether it shows a mark. Rekeying the whole house is far cheaper than replacing hardware and it closes that gap in an afternoon.

Where a door genuinely cannot be secured that day, usually because the frame is split through or the slab is bowed, we board and brace it and fit temporary hardware so the opening is closed and lockable overnight. Nobody is left with a door that will not shut.

• Wait for police to release the scene before anything is repaired or cleaned.
• Photograph every damaged door, frame, lock, window and strike from several distances before repair.
• Do not throw away broken hardware, splintered trim or a damaged cylinder. Keep it in a bag.
• Write down what appears to be missing as you notice it, over hours rather than trying to list it in one go.
• Rekey or replace every lock the missing keys operated, including the garage side door and any shed or gate.
• Check the windows and the basement, not only the door that was forced.

If you are locked out of your own house because the lock was destroyed rather than forced open, that is an emergency lockout as well as a repair, and we handle both on the same visit.

Board-up and temporary security

Boarding is a stopgap and it should look like one. Done properly it holds until a carpenter, a glazier or a door supplier can get to you, which in the middle of winter can be several days.

For a glazed panel we cut plywood to the opening and fix it through to solid framing, not to the glazing bead or the trim. For a door that will not latch, the options are a temporary rim lock or a surface bolt into sound timber, a hasp and padlock where appearance is not the concern, or a full board-over if the opening is unusable. For a commercial storefront on Davis Drive or Yonge Street, a full-face board with through-fixings is usually the only sensible answer overnight.

What we avoid: screwing into split wood and calling it secure, fixing a plate over a jamb that has already failed, and leaving a temporary fix in place so long that it becomes permanent. Temporary hardware gets scheduled out at the same time it goes in.

If your business was hit and you need to trade tomorrow morning, say so when you call. There is usually a way to get a shopfront closing and locking well enough to open the doors, even if the permanent repair is a week out.

Kicked jambs and split frames

The overwhelming majority of forced residential doors in this area fail in the same place, and it is not the lock. It is the strike plate area of the jamb.

A typical exterior door has a deadbolt throwing into a strike plate held by two screws about three quarters of an inch long, seated in a strike plate mounted to the jamb, which is itself a piece of finger-jointed pine nailed to the framing with a shim gap behind it. The bolt holds. The lock holds. The jamb splits, because the whole load lands on an inch of soft wood with air behind it.

Repair depends on how far the split runs. A short split can be glued, clamped and reinforced with a long steel strike box or a full-length jamb reinforcement plate that spreads the load across the framing instead of concentrating it. A jamb split through its full length, or one where the framing behind it has moved, needs the jamb section replaced. A slab that has bowed or where the lock stile is split around the bore usually needs replacing, though a solid door with damage only around the strike edge can sometimes be saved.

We do this reinforcement work on undamaged doors too, and honestly it is the better time to do it. If your house has never had a problem but the front door has original short strike screws, an hour of work now is worth more than any lock upgrade you could buy.

Cylinders, strikes and hardware after a break-in

Hardware that has been attacked is compromised even where it still functions. A cylinder that has been drilled, punched, snapped or gripped with pliers may still turn with the key, and it will not resist the same attack twice.

What gets replaced: any drilled or snapped cylinder, any deadbolt whose bolt is bent or whose case is distorted, any strike plate that has torn or deformed, and any handle set where the spindle or the lock body took the impact. What can often be kept: a sound lock body with a new cylinder, a good quality deadbolt that was defeated at the jamb rather than at the lock, and hinges that show no distortion.

This is also the natural moment to upgrade rather than simply replace like for like. If the door had a builder-grade deadbolt, a high security cylinder with anti-drill pins and anti-snap protection is a modest step up in cost and a large step up in resistance. If keys are unaccounted for, changing the locks across the whole property closes that off in one visit.

• Replace every attacked cylinder, even one that still works.
• Rekey every lock that a missing key operated, including garage, shed and gate.
• Fit boxed strikes and long screws on every exterior door while we are there, not only the damaged one.
• Check the patio and sliding doors: they are commonly the second attempt after a front door fails.
• Do not forget the door between the garage and the house. It is frequently the weakest lock in the building.
• Consider a deadbolt with a one-inch throw if the existing one throws less.

What insurers generally want documented

This is general guidance, not a claims process. Every policy is different, and your own insurer or broker is the authority on what yours requires.

In broad terms, most home and commercial policies expect the same handful of things after a break-in, and gathering them early is much easier than reconstructing them later.

• A police report or occurrence number. Report the incident before you repair anything.
• Photographs of the damage before repair, taken from a distance and close up, including the lock, the strike, the jamb and any tool marks.
• An itemised list of what is missing, with any receipts, serial numbers, model numbers or photographs you already have.
• Invoices for the emergency securing work, kept separate from the permanent repair invoice where possible.
• A written description of what was done to secure the property and when, since some policies require reasonable steps to prevent further loss.
• Details of any damaged hardware retained rather than discarded.

We provide an itemised invoice describing the work, the hardware fitted and the time attended, which is generally what an adjuster is looking for. We can also photograph the damage as we find it and pass those images to you. What we cannot do is tell you what your policy covers, whether to claim, or what your deductible makes worthwhile. Call your insurer or broker before you commit to anything beyond making the property safe, because in many cases they want to be notified before permanent repairs begin.

One practical note: emergency securing is usually treated differently from permanent repair, and most insurers expect you to act quickly to prevent further loss rather than waiting for approval. Ask them directly how they want that handled.

Burglary damage repair prices in Newmarket

If you are claiming, ask us to split the invoice between emergency securing and permanent repair. Adjusters generally find that easier to process, and it makes the sequence of events obvious.

These are typical 2026 Newmarket ranges, not quotes. Overnight, weekend and statutory holiday call-outs carry a premium, frame and door replacement costs vary with construction and size, and a firm price is confirmed on the phone before a technician is dispatched.

After a break-in around Newmarket

The doors we repair vary by neighbourhood. Older homes around Central Newmarket and Main Street South tend to have original frames and undersized strikes. The 1980s and 1990s subdivisions in Glenway Estates, Stonehaven, Summerhill Estates and Bristol-London mostly have finger-jointed pine jambs with short screws, which is exactly the failure point described above. Newer builds in Woodland Hill and out toward Holland Landing and Sharon usually have better slabs and lighter hardware. Small businesses along Davis Drive, Mulock Drive and Yonge Street bring aluminium storefront doors, which fail differently again, usually at the mortise cylinder or the bottom rail.

Why Newmarket calls us first

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