How to Fix a Sticking Door

obviously there's something wrong with this door I have to yank it to get it open I have to shove real hard to get it closed and that's because it's rubbing all along here up above the knob you know it could be that the hinge screws are loose doesn't seem like they're loose so let's take a closer look no the hinge Leaf is completely flush and the screws are totally tight so what to do the uninformed method for fixing this door would be to get a block plane or a block of wood with a piece of heavy grit sandpaper on it and start grinding away at the edge of the door until it easily passes into the jam however a close study of this door might reveal another method let's get it closed and take a look at the gap on either side now we know here this Gap is tight tighter than tight because that's where it's rubbing but as we look further down this knob edge of the door we'll see that the Gap grows wider near the bottom of the door to where it's at least a good fat 16th of an inch and over here on the hinge side aha we see that the Gap is a good8 of an inch maybe even 316 and as we look down the hinge edge of the door we see that there's a gap closer to an eighth of an inch just above the hinge and as we go down below we see that it Narrows down to where it's almost touching the jam this means that the top hinge has been warped or sprung now whether that occurred because of gravity or because of some kind of abuse we'll never know but what we do know at least I do and soon you will too is that we can fix this by making a simple adjustment to the top hinge to begin with let's gather the tools we'll need and that includes what we'll use to pull the pin out of the hinge I prefer a pair of diagonal cutters dkes along with a hammer and then to adjust the hinge we'll need a crescent wrench 8 in or bigger and last of all to get the hinge back together a couple of small scraps of plywood first off we have to determine which side of the hinge is attached to the door if we look where the knuckles blend into the hinge Leaf we see that the side with the two knuckles is attached to the door of course it may be a little bit different on your door you may have the three knuckle side attached to the door but in this case these are the two Knuckles we are going to adjust and in order to make that adjustment we have to pull the pin out of the hinge so we get the hammer and the dykes grab the head of the hinge pin with the jaws of the dykes cup upwards then tighten the handles lift the cap give it a little tap with your Hammer once the pin pops up a ways you can get a good bite then up and out it goes taada but watch out hinge pins are grimming you don't want to mark up the door or the wall now I'm going to show you my best door trick how to adjust or tweak a butt hinge and for that we'll use our crescent wrench with the Jaws adjusted so that they slip right over the hinge Knuckles there that fits not too loose not too tight now we slip the jaws of the crescent wrench over one of the knuckles that's attached to the door making sure that the handle is bent toward the door and we grab the handle firmly and we bend it toward the face of the door but we don't go too far only about about a 16th of an inch then we move on down to the next knuckle and we bend that one the same amount and do the same with a third knuckle if you've got one now we'll check to see whether we've done enough to cure our problem to make our check we have to join the hinge back together and to do that we need the plywood scraps and the hammer so first we slip one scrap under the door then we slip the other one under that one and give it a tap with the hammer that creates a wedge effect and up the door goes check back at our hinge and we see we're not quite there yet we're going to need that third scrap I had in the bucket we stick that one underneath the other two tap that up whoop looks like I've gone just a little bit too far so we're going to pull the bottom one out just to tweak now the hinge is perfectly married and I can put the pin right back inside of it all right let's get the hinge back together in order to see if our adjustment has done the trick to replace our pin we turn the cup side of the dkes downward on the pin head then drive it in with a few Taps from the hammer but we never drive it all the way home we don't do that until we know we're completely done with the job instead we leave just enough poking out so that we can grab it again with the dice now before we open our door we better pull out our plywood scraps all right now let's see what's going to happen it works perfectly we fixed a sticking door by tweaking or adjusting our top hinge and since the job is completely done we're going to tap that pin all the way home congratulations to us all right maybe yours doesn't work as well as mine does maybe it's winding a little at the hinges and you have to undo some of the adjustment maybe it's rubbing across the top where it never rubbed before and you have to do a little sanding whatever your problem you'll find all the instructions you need by going to www door tricks.com once you've downloaded a copy of my ebook door tricks you'll never have to worry about how to fix a household door ever again I promise

Channel: donnydoors

Views: 2,625,806

Keywords: stuck, door, sticking, rubbing, fix, hinge, warped, adjust, tweak, dikes, hammer, crescent, wrench, yank, open, slam, closed, gap, knuckle

Id: AzRqVgkjZaY

Length: 7min 28sec (448 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 02 2008