Prospect is in an active renovation phase. The suburb’s stock of Californian bungalows and interwar cottages — on Albert Street, Olive Grove, Florence Street, and the residential blocks that extend east from Prospect Road — has been attracting buyers who want the combination of established location and original character, and who are prepared to invest in bringing these homes up to contemporary standards.
That renovation process involves building inspectors, council approval, heritage consultations, architects, builders, plasterers, electricians, plumbers, and landscapers. The locksmith is almost never part of the project conversation until everything else is done — and by then, many of the decisions that affect what security is possible, practical, and cost-effective have already been locked in.
This guide is specifically about the security decisions that belong in the renovation plan, not after it. Addressing these before or during the build saves money, avoids invasive remediation work in finished spaces, and produces a better security outcome than retrofit after the fact.
Why Timing Matters for Security in a Renovation
The fundamental principle is simple: everything costs more after the walls are closed.
Before renovation, a cable run for a wired smart lock, a video doorbell, or a hardwired security camera can be laid in open wall cavities as part of the electrical rough-in. After renovation, running the same cable requires cutting through finished plaster, chasing walls, making good, and repainting — a job that costs ten times as much and leaves evidence in any plaster work that’s visible under raking light.
Before renovation, a decision about where to position door frames, where the front door will sit relative to the facade, and what type of hardware will suit the heritage character can be made in collaboration with the architect and builder. After renovation, a smart lock that requires a non-standard backset on a door that’s already been hung and finished is a problem without a clean solution.
Before renovation, adding a rear gate or side gate in a fence run that’s being replaced anyway costs almost nothing extra. After renovation, adding a gate to an established fence line requires a builder, a council approval potentially, and significant cost.
The locksmith conversation should happen during design, not at handover.
The Pre-Renovation Security Checklist
1. Map Every External Access Point
Before the builder starts, walk the property and identify every point through which someone could access the interior: front door, rear door, any side doors, garage-to-house internal door, side gates, rear lane gate, sash or casement windows at ground level, any access from a shared path or common area.
This is the security perimeter. The renovation should address every point on that perimeter, not just the front door. A beautifully renovated Prospect bungalow with a period-sympathetic front door on a quality deadbolt and a back door that hasn’t been touched since 1985 is not a well-secured property.
2. Decide on the Smart Lock Question Before the Doors Are Hung
If you’re considering smart lock technology — app-controlled access, keypad entry, access logs for tradespeople — this decision needs to be made before the doors are ordered and hung.
Smart locks have specific backset and door thickness requirements that vary by product. Australian heritage door profiles (40mm to 45mm thick, often imperial backset dimensions) are not always compatible with the products available at consumer electronics retailers. A door ordered and hung for a standard deadbolt may need to be replaced or modified if a smart lock requiring different dimensions is selected later.
Decide on the desired function first (keyless entry? remote access? access logs?), select the product second, and specify the door and frame to suit the product third. This sequence produces a clean installation. The reverse sequence produces compromises.
3. Cable Runs for Wired Security Equipment
Before the electrical rough-in is complete, discuss with your electrician:
Video doorbell power: a standard video doorbell requires either a wired low-voltage connection to an existing doorbell transformer, a direct 240V connection (for some products), or battery power with a dedicated mounting point. A wired installation is significantly more reliable long-term. The cable run is trivial during rough-in and significant afterward.
Security camera positions: if you intend to have any security cameras (front entry, rear lane, driveway, side access), identify the mounting positions before plaster-up. External camera positions require either a cable penetration through the external wall or a surface-mounted conduit run; both are simpler before the walls are finished inside.
Alarm panel position: if an alarm system is planned (even if not immediately), identify where the control panel will sit and run conduit to external sensor positions during the build. An alarm system installed after renovation in a plaster-and-paint-finished Prospect bungalow is a surface-mount cable-and-conduit system visible across finished walls. One installed during renovation can be fully concealed.
4. Heritage Hardware Decision
If your Prospect bungalow has original hardware — and at the bungalow price points in this suburb’s 2026 market, most buyers want to retain it — the renovation is the moment to have the hardware properly assessed, serviced, and decided on.
The options in rough order of preference are: retain and service (clean the mechanism, remove paint accumulation, respring where needed, rekey the cylinder if there is one), retain and supplement (keep the original case, add a quality deadbolt in a heritage-sympathetic position that doesn’t change the external appearance), or replace like-for-like (source a period-sympathetic replacement case in the same dimension profile as the original). Replacement with contemporary hardware that doesn’t match the period character of the door should be a last resort on a heritage-significant bungalow.
Have a locksmith assess the original hardware before the builder removes it. A good case that appears non-functional often needs cleaning and service, not replacement.
Pro Tip: During renovation, add blocking timber in the wall cavity beside the door frame before plastering — a short section of 90×45 hardwood framing directly behind where a strike plate or additional bolt hardware might go. Retrofitting anchoring timber after plaster-up is far more invasive. This takes your builder five minutes and costs nothing during the frame stage.
5. Rear Lane and Side Gate Planning
Many Prospect bungalows back onto the rear lane system that runs through the suburb’s residential blocks — narrow service lanes that provided tradesperson and delivery access in the early-twentieth century and now serve a mix of garage access, bin storage, and incidental pedestrian use.
If your renovation includes any rear boundary work — new fencing, a rear garage, a new gate — plan the gate security as part of that scope. A gate that’s being fitted new should have a quality keyed slam lock or flush bolt system installed at the time of construction, not added afterward. The difference in cost between a properly specified gate lock and a barrel bolt at new-gate installation is negligible. The difference in outcome is significant.
If no rear boundary work is planned but the current rear gate is inadequate, assess and upgrade it separately from the main renovation — it’s a discrete job that doesn’t need to wait for building works.
6. Internal Garage-to-House Door
In Prospect bungalows with attached or semi-attached garages — a common feature in bungalows of the 1930s that had garages added to the rear of the property — the door between the garage and the house interior is often the weakest security point in the entire property.
This door is on the interior of the property, not visible from the street, and is frequently treated as an internal door rather than a security door. But if the garage is accessible from outside — which any garage is — the internal garage door is effectively an external door that happens to be one step away from the main interior.
During renovation, this door should receive the same security specification as any other external door: solid core timber or a steel-faced door, quality deadbolt, and a properly anchored strike plate.
A Conversation on Florence Street
I was called to a property on Florence Street — one of Prospect’s residential streets between Prospect Road and Churchill Road — after a renovation had been completed. The owners had beautifully restored the front of the bungalow: original timber fretwork on the porch reinstated, front door refinished with period-appropriate hardware. But at the rear, the builder had installed a new laundry door in a new frame — and it had a passage latch only. No deadbolt. The builder had specified the frame and door but left hardware to the owner.
The owner hadn’t thought about the rear door during the build. The builder hadn’t flagged it. The result was a renovated property worth well over a million dollars with a $30 passage latch on the rear door that I could defeat in about 15 seconds.
Fitting a deadbolt at that point required a locksmith, took 45 minutes, and cost around $180. Had the owner specified it during the build, the builder’s hardware supplier would have included it for around $80 in the door hardware package.
The same principle applied to the garage-to-house internal door: passage latch, hollow core. We upgraded it to a solid-core door with a proper deadbolt during a second visit.
Neither of these was an oversight by a careless owner — they were the result of a build process where security simply wasn’t part of the design conversation. That’s the conversation this guide is trying to move earlier.