How to fix a catching/rubbing door that won't close // Beginners guide

if you have a door that does this i'm going to show you how to fix that so hey everybody welcome back a couple years ago i installed all brand new doors down my hallway here now we have a lot of soil movement here where i live and every spring and every winter everything shifts around and right now we're headed into winter outside it is very cold out today so everything shifted usually all the doors are perfectly fine this little guy however has been giving me grief ever since i installed it i had to do a bunch of work to make this guy fit initially and it has been working but this year things went south so i'm going to go over a few things you can check and you guys can pick and choose any one thing or a couple things that may work for you now with the door closed the very first thing to check is your reveal all the way around now the reveal is the relationship of the door to the frame so it's how big of a gap you have on each side between the two of them so we're going to check that and that'll tell you where at least where to start looking for your problem where your problem lies so you're going to want to check the top the center and the bottom of your reveals now as you can see my reveal at the bottom and my reveal at the top are different so the door is sitting cockeyed in the frame right now on the hinge side i've got a big gap at the top and a small gap at the bottom which is the exact opposite on the other side of the door and i confirm this by just closing the door part way you can see i'm touching all the way across all the way down to about there and it starts to open back up again so my problem is on the upper half of the door one thing to check and see that may be out of whack as well take a four foot level and then take the level on your door stop itself and just set it in there and double check that your door frame is not out of whack too far maybe your door frame has shifted the whole wall is moved in that case it could be a lot more fixing that needs to happen go ahead and double check the striker side as well make sure that side is fine if both of those are good then you're good then all we got to do is probably just some hinge adjustments all right so now i know my problem is isolated to the top half the door now i got to address this so the first place we're going to look is our hinges now there's a few things you can check on your hinges to make sure that they're in correct alignment one just run your hand along the door frame itself on the top and the bottom and make sure that your hinge is sitting perfectly flush with the door frame when i installed these guys this hinge was way out of whack it was actually sitting almost the entire hinge thickness proud of the door jamb itself it was barely a mortise here for the hinge to fit in so i had to take some material out in order to get this guy to fix i had to do the same thing on the door just to recess it enough and that actually pulled my door back into alignment at first obviously i've still got a problem now so i've got to look further removing material from the door frame while it's already installed is pretty simple obviously we got to get the hinge out of the way then just use a good sharp knife and score around the outside edge and then a good sharp chisel and shave off material all the way up from the outside in until you've got it flush keep double checking as you go to make sure you don't take off too much material then you got another problem on your hands another thing you can check to see is there any sagging any of the hinges so have any of the screws been backed out or were they over tightened upon install and now the door is actually sort of drooping away from the frame so where you can check that literally grab the door on the opposite side of the hinge and just push slightly towards the hinge itself you don't want to push so hard do you rip the door off the screws because they're not they're not in there very strong when you think about it's a very light door it doesn't take much force to hold it but the screws themselves are very very short so just push slightly against that if you see any wiggle room back and forth the hinge is backed or the screws have backed off on the hinge and they need to be tightened now it isn't much but you can see a little bit of play along here and right up through here the door does move in so i've got a problem with my hinge to the door itself tightening our screws up is actually a pretty simple affair so it doesn't matter if it's the frame or the door itself this will work so go ahead and pull the door flush and square with your hinge exactly where you want it to sit and then take a couple of toothpicks you may need one you may need two and stick them in the hole and literally just re-tighten your screws back up again snapping them off flush make sure to use a screwdriver though so you don't over tighten the screws a second time and now same thing as before grab the door over here and push on it and watch i've got no play in that hinge anymore so that took the slack out of here but as you can see actually touching so gotta look elsewhere now another thing you can try is try sucking this hinge side in so i've got the hinge flush with the door and the frame itself and i've got the slack taken out of it now in the screws but i've still got it touching over here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to try sucking this side in so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a drill with a small drill bit and another longer screw i'm going to take out one of these screws i'm going to pre-drill a hole and i'm gonna put this in now this is gonna go through the frame into the stud behind there and hopefully pull this part of the door over a little bit opening me a gap over on this side now that's screwing check it out beautiful now when you do the screw through the hinge like that into the stud behind you may have to do a couple of hinges just to balance out your pressure uh check it out close the door double check your reveal make sure even all the way along if it's way out of whack you may have to back off or tighten that screw a little bit more if you see the door frame start to bow right there and you get tight up here huge reveal right here and then tight down here again somewhere so you fix the problem right here but you've made problems up here down here so you may need to actually address the other side as well if you back this screw off so you've got a nice reveal but you're still ever so slightly touching may have to attack this side now to attack the opposite side of your hinges so your striker side in order to balance out the pressure same thing because if we put a screw through here now what we're going to end up with is the exact same problem we're going to make kind of a kitty whomp we're going to make kind of an s shape going all the way down it's gonna kind of look like a spaghetti noodle so we're gonna have to balance out the pressure so we're gonna have to put a few screws in probably honestly just one around the striker plate and then another one almost in line with this hinge and that'll just sort of even out the pressure on this side and open your gap up over here what you would do to fix that problem is you're gonna take a countersink drill bit with in your drill and you're gonna do the exact same thing you're gonna drill through on this side i like to drill through the door stop itself it just gives you some more meat to drill through as opposed to just going through the frame right here is twice as thick obviously so i like to drill through there you can pick and choose either or but this is my preference so again about in line with my hinge on the other side i would take my countersink drill bit and i would go smack dab in the middle and drill a hole just deep enough to sink the head of a deck screw in there but i got one here that's two and a half inches that's plenty two inches be okay probably but two and a half inches definitely make sure you got enough and then you would drill that in through there and that'll suck this side of the door jamb over obviously opening up your hole so your door can close then again i would take another one probably use six or eight inches above your striker plate and i would put another one through there and again that'll just balance out the pressure now one thing to keep in mind when you put a screw through the frame it doesn't matter if it's on the hinge side or the striker side only tighten it just enough that your reveal opens up keep checking it and opening and closing the door and making sure you haven't gone too far and one thing you can end up running into is your caulking between your door casing and your door frame you can actually start to blow the caulking out and then you'll have to cut it out reapply and repaint so just keep that in mind if you go too far you may end up with more problems you got to fix once you put your screw in then go ahead just take some spackle cover up the screw hole sand it flush touch it up with some paint you'll never know that problem happened as you can see my reveal on the striker side is pretty well even all the way up top which is perfect and on my hinge side it's pretty well even as well i've got a slight bow there if you really look at it but if i don't tell anybody they'll never know and then it's even pretty much all the way down again which is awesome so you go guys four things you can check to fix a door in your house that may be catching and rubbing on the frame and get it closing absolutely beautifully again so i honestly hope you guys picked something up in this video and you feel confident now to go and attack a door in your house that may be driving you absolutely mental because it's rubbing and touching and not closing so i hope you pick something up if you do awesome feel free to let me know and give me a thumbs up down below i really really appreciate it and i'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Jesse does DIY

Views: 153,759

Keywords: diy, how to, beginner, tutorial, fix door sag, how to fix door not closing, how to fix door, fix interior door not closing, interior door not closing, fixing door rub, fix door catching, interior door catching, fix door binding, interior door binding, how to fix binding door, how to fix catching door, how to fix rubbing door, how to fix interior door, adjusting interior door, adjust interior door, interior door adjustment, house door not closing, door, close, not closing

Id: D-PmQUt90CI

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020