Sticking Door? It’s not the door’s fault!
Not long ago, our master bathroom door started sticking, then jamming. It was rubbing the top of the door frame so that the door wouldn’t close completely. (Luckily this was the master bath and not the one company used.) The problem grew worse over time. After doing some thinking about the problem, I realized the door wasn’t the problem. Neither was moisture.
We had a slim, though heavy, solid wood lingere chest of drawers on the same wall as the bathroom door. The weight of the filled dresser was causing the floor joists to bend under the load. The wall, of course, was following the floor, lowering the door frame, and causing the bathroom door to rub. The floor, not the door, needed to be repaired.
If you have a sticking or rubbing door, don’t get mad at it. Don’t get out the planer to start shaving the door. Look around. Do you have heavy furniture or cabinets near the door? Your floor joists may need bracing. Sure, you could plane the door and fix the symptom, but you’ll have to do it again in a few months because your joists will continue to bend under the weight of whatever caused the problem in the first place.
The traditional method of bracing joists with hydraulic jacks is not for the inexperienced or faint of heart. Take a look for yourself.
Plus, that method has some major shortcomings which I’ll discuss soon. But if you are the willing do-it-yourselfer, (or a professional) I have a safe, more effective, inexpensive method that you can use to level floors . It will take some instruction, a little muscle, about $20 per joist being raised, and a cordless drill. If you’ll comment on this post that you are interested before the product appears in my store (coming) then I’ll let you be one of my free beta testers.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I have a beautiful solid wood front door (no storm door). The door rubs against the hardwood floor a lot in the winter and is fine in the summer. The adjustable threshold can not be adjusted enough to fix this problem what else could it be?
The home is only two years old could the foundation be settling still?
I am a carpenter and a little confuse about what to do first to fix this problem and not have to come back again. Thanks for any help you could give me.
This home is in southeastern Wisconsin.
December 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Brian, your mention of the storm door seems to be the clue here. In the winter, the door (and perhaps the framing around it; even the floor joists below that room) is getting extremely dry. Then in the summer, the moisture in the wood rises — especially if the home is air-conditioned and the door itself becomes a magnet for outside moisture (adding a storm door should really help with this; especially if you can get it to seal well on all edges).
It is also possible that seasonal moisture fluctuations in the soil below your foundation are causing the soil to rise and fall with the seasons. Is the foundation on a sticky (when moist) clay? Are there any cracks in your foundation? If the answers to these are both no, then this is probably not the source of your problem.
When the door scrapes the hardwood, is it scraping as it closes or is it scraping when it is open?
One little mystery: why would it be scraping when dry (winter), rather than when it is in it’s expanded/moist state (summer)??