How To Fix A Sticky Exterior Door | 3 Easy Fixes

hey what's up you guys a scallop they've a home repairs and today we are approaching how to fix an exterior door that is very hard to open because it's sticking this is a pretty new home so things that may be settled out a little bit or hinges have loosened up so I'm just going to show you the different ways that how I would step through trying to troubleshoot this issue and ultimately get it fixed so the door operates as expected because right now it's really hard to open especially you can feel at the top side and the same very hard to close so stick with me and I'll walk you through how to get this one fixed alright so step one we want to make sure that both the latch and deadbolt are operating properly you can't really see the deadbolt here but it is fully retracting and it's not hitting the strike plate this latch you can kind of see you want to make sure that that is fully retracting and not getting caught on the strike plate here this did have an issue actually I just swapped it out you can see the old damaged latch in the background there and here's the new ones you can actually buy these latching mechanisms from Amazon or your local big-box store and swap those out so this one I did just swap out now it is working properly so it's good here in terms of the latch and deadbolt the problems it's not like here in terms of the door sticking so we'll go into step 2 okay so now that we know the deadbolt and latch are working properly we want to check the gap between the door jamb which is the piece of wood here and the door itself so uptight top here you can see we're very tight as I go down that gap starts to get bigger and bigger until it gets to about an eighth of an inch at the bottom you can also check your top which is also pretty tight on this one and then the gap between on the hinge side which again it's about an eighth of an inch on top and as I go down it gets tighter and tighter at the bottom so I think we found our problem and that is up here in the corner it's too tight so let me show you how to address that issue and get this door lined up alright now that we found those gaps we want to open up the door and check out the hinges both on the jamb side and the door side just with a simple Philips head screwdriver and also checking by grabbing the door and trying to wiggle it over time if you haven't maintained these hinges they can loosen up and you'll easily see the slot so then you can just try to tighten those in this case the hinges look in really good shape and you can see that the hinge is flush between the hinge and the door itself so these are in good shape but if they weren't you can pick up you can pick up small packs of these wood screws from your local home improvements or they'll have one inches and two and a quarter inch wood screws in there number nine which is the right size for this hinge the two and the quarters are nice because then that's going to give you a little better secure hold compared to sometimes they're just using one inch screws in these hinges so overall I'm happy with these hinges on this one that is not our issue but on yours maybe just a simple tightening and getting some of those two and a quarter inch screws especially if your one inch is it's stripped out and it's not holding the hinge tight go ahead and grab that pack it's about buck fifty in the description you'll see a link to once on Amazon which will give you an idea of exactly what I'm talking about so now let's jump to another step if this is not your problem what is something else that you can do to address the issue okay so now the hinges on this door are tight in good shape both on the jamb side and on the door side so I'm going to go to last step usually in something like this where you're trying to line the door and that is to slightly bend the hinges so we know on this door that we have an eighth of an inch gap on the top side and on the bottom side and then opposite those we have no gap so I'm going to bend in the hinge which has two knuckles on the door side I'm going to bend that in towards the door slightly a sixteenth of an inch and you got to kind of play with these things so that it will pull that door in so I'll have less of a gap here at the top on the hinge side and an actual gap over on the handle side of the door so this one you're gonna have to work with it a little bit this is an exterior door this is really easy on interior doors but you have much bigger gaps this one has weather sealing all the way around it right to get a good secure seal from that X to the outside so you're gonna have a little less space and specifically watch your top the top is pretty tight on this one so I don't have that much to play with so I can only make a small adjustment and then and that hopefully that loosens everything up in this door operates a little bit more like it shouldn't so taking a standard sized crescent wrench really the larger the better I'm going to slightly bend those two knuckles there on the door side of the hinge again I'm not adjusting much so I'm just giving a small Bend and here you'll see the resulted offset of the two knuckles on the door side bent towards the door now that should give me enough to then bring the door tighter on the side and loosen up that gap on the handle side now to get the pin to drop back in place I'm just going to the door with the pin sitting in the top knuckle and then opening it to level where it's pretty much lined up it makes it super easy where you can just press the pin down with your hand to easily get a set back into the hinge okay so that's it we have the door adjusted so remember you gotta step through make sure your deadbolt and handle or latch is working correctly and then you check your hinges super common for those to be loose or the screws to be stripped out or just not giving the hold you need especially on the exterior door because it's gonna be much heavier than your common interior doors especially nowadays most interior doors are hollow core and just really lightweight so this door now does open it close it still has a little bit of interaction up on the top side here so allow us to do that other than on that top jamb do a little sandpaper you can see where the paint has been chipping and additionally because it's not an interior door I do want a really good seal on the outside this one's just going to the backyard so it's not heavily used so getting that nice seal does help to keep the breeze from coming in in the winter time into the garage so I do prefer a pretty tight seal on this door here and this one is it's good to go so hopefully this helped you out and will help you with your issue with your interior or exterior door if you have any questions go ahead and in the comments below I do interact with any questions you have so would be happy to hear about your experience or how your situation might be a little different also if you're a pro which I am NOT and you have tips on how to address this type of issue I welcome any comments as well B's then that helps anybody out in the future so again my name is Scott with everyday home repairs don't forget to subscribe to our channel as we have new videos coming out weekly to help you around the house take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 301,664

Keywords: exterior door hard to open and close, exterior door sticking, bending door hinges, door hinge screws stripped wood, door hinge adjustment, exterior door gap on side

Id: sMly8W_q9Go

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020