Door Repair: Fixing a Door That Sticks, Sags or Won't Latch.
The bathroom door has to be shouldered shut after a week of rain, and the front door closes but shows a line of daylight along the bottom. Most door problems come from loose hinges, swollen wood or worn weatherstripping, and most of them can be fixed without replacing the door.
Start with the gap around the door
Close the door and look at the gap between the door and the frame, along the top and down both sides. On a door that hangs right, the gap is about the thickness of a nickel and stays even all the way around. Where the gap closes to nothing, the door is rubbing. Where it opens wide, the door has moved away from the frame.
The pattern tells you the cause. A tight spot at the top corner on the latch side, with a wide gap above the top hinge, means the door has dropped on its hinges. A door that is tight along the whole latch edge has swollen or has too many coats of paint on it. If the gaps are even and the door still will not stay shut, look at the latch and the strike plate.
A door that sags and rubs at the top
A door hangs its whole weight on the top hinge, and after years of use the screws work loose. Open the door, lift up on the handle and watch the top hinge. If the hinge leaf moves against the frame, the screws are loose or their holes are stripped.
Tighten every hinge screw by hand with a screwdriver. A drill strips soft jamb wood easily. If a screw spins without getting tight, take it out, pack the hole with wooden toothpicks or a golf tee dipped in wood glue, let the glue set, trim it flush and drive the screw again.
If the door still drops, replace one of the short screws in the top hinge, on the frame side, with a 3-inch screw. The short factory screws only reach the door jamb, which is a board about three-quarters of an inch thick. A 3-inch screw passes through the jamb into the wall stud behind it and pulls the top of the door back toward the hinge side. Drive it slowly and stop when the gap evens out, because too much pull bows the jamb.
A door that sticks when the weather turns damp
Wood takes on moisture and swells. Along the coast, from Oceanside up to Huntington Beach, and anywhere in Southern California during a wet winter, a door that closed fine in September can bind in January. Bathroom and laundry room doors do it all year. The top and bottom edges of many doors were never painted at the factory or by the painter, and bare wood on those edges absorbs moisture faster than the painted faces.
Check the hinges first, since a sagging door and a swollen door feel the same when you push on them. If the hinges are tight, find the spot that rubs. The paint there is usually scuffed or shiny. Take the door off, plane or sand that spot a little at a time, and test the fit before you take off more. Then prime and paint the bare wood the same day, including the top and bottom edges. An edge left bare swells again with the next rain.
Most interior doors in newer homes are hollow. They have a solid wood strip around the edge, often only about an inch wide, and cardboard or foam inside. That strip is all there is to plane, so a hollow door that needs more than a small trim should be rehung or replaced.
A door that will not latch
When a door closes but pops back open, the latch bolt is missing the hole in the strike plate, the metal plate on the frame. Rub a pencil, chalk or lipstick on the end of the latch bolt, close the door and open it again. The mark on the strike plate shows whether the latch is hitting high or low.
A latch that hits low usually means the door has sagged, and tightening the hinges brings it back up. If the hinges are sound and the latch misses by an eighth of an inch or less, file the opening in the strike plate a little larger with a metal file. A bigger miss means moving the plate. Unscrew it, chisel the recess longer in the direction it needs to go, fill the old screw holes with glued wood and screw the plate into its new position.
A door that latches but rattles in the frame has the opposite problem. The small metal tab inside the strike plate opening can be bent slightly toward the door stop with a screwdriver, which holds the closed door tighter.
Drafts and daylight around an exterior door
Stand inside with the door closed during the day and look for light around the edges. Then close the door on a strip of paper at several spots. If the paper slides out with no resistance, the weatherstripping there has stopped sealing. In a Santa Ana wind those gaps let in dust as well as hot air, and in winter they let rain blow in under the door.
On most doors built in the last few decades, the weatherstripping is a foam strip with a plastic fin that presses into a slot cut in the frame. The old strip pulls out by hand and the new one pushes in, cut to length with scissors. At the bottom, check the sweep, the rubber or vinyl strip fastened to the bottom of the door. A torn or flattened sweep is replaced by sliding or unscrewing it off. Many thresholds also have three or four screws along the top that raise or lower the center strip, so a small gap under the door can often be closed with a screwdriver.
Feel the bottom of the door and the bottom of the frame on both sides while you are there. Soft or crumbling wood means water has been getting in for a while, and the rotted wood has to be replaced before new weatherstripping does any good.
Sliding glass doors that drag
Nearly every Southern California house and apartment has a sliding patio door, and when one gets hard to move the cause is usually dirt in the track or worn rollers. Vacuum the track, scrub it with a stiff brush and soapy water, and dry it. Do not grease the track. Oil and grease collect grit, and the door is harder to move a month later.
At each end of the bottom edge of the sliding panel there is a small hole with an adjustment screw behind it. Turning the screw raises or lowers the roller at that corner. Raise both sides a little at a time until the door clears the track and the gap along the frame is even from top to bottom.
If cleaning and adjusting do not help, the rollers are worn flat or rusted and need to be replaced, which means lifting the panel out of the frame. A glass panel is heavy and awkward, so it takes two people. The screen door next to it runs on its own small rollers, and a torn screen can be re-meshed without replacing the frame.
When sticking doors point to the foundation
Several doors that start sticking in the same season, or a door that goes out of square together with new diagonal cracks in the drywall above its corners, can point to the house moving. Parts of Riverside, San Diego and Orange County sit on clay soil that swells when it gets wet and shrinks when it dries, and a slab foundation moves with it. Planing the door will not help for long. Have a foundation contractor or a structural engineer look at it before you spend money on the doors.
Check for a slow leak too. A door frame next to a bathroom or under a window can swell because the wall behind it is wet. Our article on the first 48 hours after a leak explains what to look for.
Before you sand, trim or swap a door
- The door between the house and an attached garage is part of the fire separation. Code calls for a solid or fire-rated door there, and in California it normally has to close and latch by itself. Do not swap it for an ordinary interior door, and do not remove the closer or the spring hinges.
- Paint on doors and frames in homes built before 1978 may contain lead. Test it before you sand or plane, because the dust spreads through the house.
- In a rental, California law (Civil Code 1941.3) requires the landlord to keep a working deadbolt on each main entry door. A front door that no longer closes or locks properly should be fixed right away.
Repair it or replace it
Loose hinges, a latch that misses, worn weatherstripping and a swollen edge are all repairs. A door is usually worth replacing when the bottom of an exterior door has gone soft or its skin is peeling apart, when the door is warped so that one corner stands off the stop while the others touch, or when the wood around the lock has split.
There are two ways to replace one. A new door slab is hung in the existing frame, which means cutting hinge recesses and boring the lock holes to match the old positions exactly. A prehung door comes already hinged in its own frame, and the old frame and trim come out to make room for it. A slab is the smaller job when the old frame is square and solid. If the frame is damaged or badly out of square, a prehung door is the better choice.
Fix the doorstop while you are at it. A missing stop is how a doorknob ends up going through the wall, and a hole like that is one of the most common jobs on our drywall repair page.
What to do yourself and when to call us
Tightening hinge screws, cleaning a slider track and pushing in new weatherstripping take a screwdriver and an hour. Call us when the door has to come off and be trimmed, when the frame is split or soft, when a sliding door needs new rollers, or when a new door needs to be hung. Door repair, lock replacement, keypad locks and screen door mesh are all on our price list on the Services page.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my door stick only when it rains?
Wood swells when it takes on moisture, and bare wood swells fastest. On many doors the top and bottom edges were never painted. Once the door dries out, sand or plane the spot that rubs, then prime and paint every bare edge so it stops absorbing moisture.
How do I fix a door that will not latch?
Tighten the hinge screws first, because a door that has dropped makes the latch hit below the hole in the strike plate. If the latch still misses by a small amount, file the strike plate opening larger. If it misses by more than about an eighth of an inch, move the strike plate.
Can a sticking door mean a foundation problem?
It can, but a single sticking door usually has loose hinges or swollen wood. Several doors that go out of square around the same time, along with new diagonal cracks above door corners or cracks in the slab, are a reason to have a foundation contractor or structural engineer look at the house.
How much does it cost to have a door repaired?
Our price for repairing a door is $125–$275, depending on what the door needs. Replacing a deadbolt or entry lock, installing a keypad lock and replacing sliding screen door mesh are flat-rate items on the price list on our Services page.
Have a door that will not close, lock or seal? WestHills Contracting repairs and installs doors in homes and rentals across Riverside, San Diego and Orange County. Send us a photo or call 951-587-7633.
