My door sticks only in summer. Is that normal?

Yes, if the gap is tight evenly all the way round and goes away in winter. That is genuine seasonal movement and the right answer is usually to leave it alone. If the gap is wedge-shaped — tight at one corner and wide at the opposite one — that is a dropped door and it will not improve in January.

Should I plane a door that is catching?

Almost never, and not before the hinges have been checked. A door planed to clear in a humid August has a visible gap and a draft in a dry January, and you cannot put the material back. Planing is a last resort after the hinges, the strike and the frame have been ruled out.

What is the long-screw trick?

Replacing one short hinge screw per hinge with a three-inch screw that reaches past the jamb and the shim into the stud behind. It pulls the hinge and the door back up into position. It is the single most effective repair on a dropped interior door and the material cost is pennies.

My door closes but will not latch. Is that the same problem?

Usually not. That is normally the strike plate on the frame being out of position by about an eighth of an inch, which is a separate and smaller fix. If it latches when you push the door firmly, that is the giveaway.

Can you re-key several locks to one key?

Yes, where the lock bodies allow it, and it is normally the cheapest way to deal with a house or a unit that has four different keys. Where the existing hardware cannot be re-keyed it gets replaced, and that is priced before it happens.

Is it cheaper to do several doors at once?

Considerably. Most of the cost of a single door call is getting somebody to the property. Six doors in one visit is a very different price per door from one door on its own, and that is where nearly all the saving on this work is.

Why Your Door Sticks in Summer and Rattles in Winter | Lansing, MI

The fix that looks fastest is the one that comes back

A door catches on the frame. Somebody takes a plane or a belt sander to the edge, the door shuts, and everybody is pleased. Then February arrives and the same door has a draft down one side and rattles when the furnace kicks on.

That is the single most common door mistake in Michigan houses, and it happens because the obvious diagnosis is wrong. The door was not too big. It had moved.

Wood does move — but far less than people think

Seasonal movement is real. Our summers run humid and our winters run very dry indoors, and a solid wood door does take on and give up moisture across that swing. But the movement is small, and more importantly it is across the grain, not along it. A door gains width in a humid August, barely any height.

So when a door is catching along the top of the latch side, or dragging on the floor at the latch side, or leaving a wedge-shaped gap that is tight at one corner and wide at the opposite one, that is not swelling. Swelling is even. That pattern is a door that has dropped, and it has dropped because of the hinges.

How to read your own door in thirty seconds

Shut it slowly and watch where it touches first. That corner is the whole diagnosis.
Look at the gap all the way round. Even gap, tight everywhere, in August only: that is seasonal. Wedge-shaped gap, same all year: that is mechanical.
Lift the handle while the door is open. If the door moves at all, the hinges are loose. On a lot of doors you can feel a sixteenth of play that way, and a sixteenth at the hinge is a quarter of an inch at the latch.

The five-cent repair

Here is the part worth knowing before anyone charges you for it. Interior doors are hung on hinge screws about three quarters of an inch long. Those screws go into the jamb, which is a thin board, and the jamb is shimmed off the real framing behind it. All the weight of the door is hanging on an inch of soft pine.

Over years, those screws loosen. The top hinge goes first because it carries the most load, the door tips, and the latch-side top corner swings forward into the frame.

The repair is to take out one screw per hinge and replace it with a three-inch screw that passes through the jamb, through the shim, and bites into the stud behind it. That pulls the hinge — and the door with it — back into position. On a surprising share of dropped doors the gap closes up as you drive it, and you can watch it happen.

It costs pennies and it is permanent, because now the weight is on framing instead of on a board. If you are handy and the door is interior, this is a genuinely reasonable thing to do yourself.

When it is not the hinges

Three other things produce the same symptom and are worth separating before anybody starts cutting.

The strike plate is out by an eighth of an inch

The door closes fine but will not latch, or it latches only if you lean on it. That is not the door at all — it is the little metal plate on the frame sitting slightly high, low or deep. It moves with two screws and a chisel cut, and filling the old holes properly matters more than the cut does.

The frame is out of square

If the gap is wedge-shaped and the hinges are tight, the opening itself has moved. In a house that has settled, or over a basement with a post that has dropped, the frame goes out of square and the door is just reporting it honestly. That is a bigger conversation, and anyone who planes the door to match an out-of-square frame has hidden a structural symptom rather than fixed a door.

The floor has moved

A door that used to clear the carpet and now drags, where the hinges are sound and the gap at the top is unchanged, is often a floor problem rather than a door problem — particularly over a crawl space or a bathroom where something has been getting wet underneath. If you have a door like that above a soft spot in the floor, the door is the least of it.

Exterior doors are a different question

On an exterior door, the thing people call sticking is often the weather stripping doing its job, and the thing they call a draft is usually the threshold and the sweep rather than the door. Most adjustable thresholds have four or five screws under a cap that raise and lower the whole bar; a quarter turn each closes a gap you can see daylight through.

Before you accept a quote to replace an exterior door because it is drafty, it is worth having somebody check the sweep, the threshold height and the stripping, because those three together cost a fraction of a door and fix the complaint most of the time.

Why this is worth doing in batches

Doors are the highest-frequency repair in this business and the cheapest per unit when they are done together. Nearly all the cost in a single door visit is getting somebody there. Six doors in one visit is a very different number per door from one door on its own, and if you have a house or a rental where three or four doors have been annoying you for a year, that is the economical way to deal with it.

Before you call anybody

Photograph the gap. Shut the door as far as it goes, stand back, photograph where it catches.
Try the long screw first on an interior door. It is free and it works often enough to be worth the five minutes.
Count your doors. If there are several, they should be priced together.
If you are locked out, that is a locksmith today, not us. We replace and re-key locks; we do not open them.

Want it looked at? Send a photograph of where the door catches and say how many doors you have. Somebody works out whether it is hinges, strike, frame or floor, and puts a fixed price in writing. Coming out is free and there is no trip charge. Doors, locks & hardware · Get in touch.