Door repair
Door Repair
The slab is the part least likely to be at fault, and the part everyone blames. Planing it solves August and creates January.
At a glance
- Service
- Door repair and realignment
- Typical visit
- One to three hours
- Most common fault
- A dropped slab or a drifted strike
- Worst advice
- Plane the edge
- Estimates
- Free, firm price first
First question
Is this urgent, or can it wait?
Doors fail gradually and then suddenly matter. Here is how we rank them.
Fix now
Security or weather
- An exterior door that will not latch or lock
- A door that will not close properly
- Visible daylight around a closed exterior door
- A damaged or forced frame after a break-in
- Soft, wet timber at the bottom of a jamb
Fix soon
Getting worse or costing money
- Catching at one corner and getting tighter
- A noticeable draught along the bottom
- Hinge screws spinning without biting
- A threshold that has dropped or worn through
- A door that needs a shoulder to close
Can wait
Irritating but harmless
- An interior door that sticks slightly in summer
- A closet or bifold off its track
- A loose handle or worn finish
- A squeaking hinge
- A door that swings open or shut on its own
Second question
What has actually gone wrong?
A hung door is four separate things: the slab, a frame of two jambs and a head, hardware in the form of hinges and a latch, and a seal. When something goes wrong, it is rarely the slab.
Far more often, hinge screws have lost their grip in dried-out jamb timber and the slab has dropped a few millimetres, or the opening itself has moved with the building. The door then catches at a corner, or the latch stops meeting the strike, and people reach for a plane.
That is the one repair we will argue about. Planing removes timber permanently to compensate for something that is seasonal and temporary. It works until the timber shrinks back the other way in January, and then you have a gap you cannot close.
What the technician will call it
- Slab
- The door itself, separate from its frame.
- Jamb
- The vertical side members of the frame. Where hinge screws lose their bite first.
- Strike plate
- The metal plate on the jamb that the latch enters. Usually what has drifted.
- Sweep
- The seal along the bottom of the door. Wears flat and is cheap to replace.
- Threshold
- The sill under the door. Takes meltwater, salt and boots, and fails at the ends.
- Prehung
- A door supplied already hung in its own frame. Rarely fits an old opening without work.
Third question
Can it actually be repaired?
The advice homeowners get about doors is unusually bad.
In practice
Three calls from last season
Composite examples of how door calls typically resolve.
Case 01
- The call
- “The front door has to be shouldered shut.”
- What we found
- Top hinge screws spinning freely in jamb timber that had dried out. The slab had dropped about four millimetres.
- What it took
- Long screws anchored into the framing behind the jamb, slab lifted back to square, strike reset. Under two hours.
Case 02
- The call
- “There's a draught and the hall is freezing.”
- What we found
- A sweep worn flat and a threshold that had dropped at one end. The door itself was sound.
- What it took
- New sweep, threshold reset and resealed. Same visit, and an immediate difference to the hall.
Case 03
- The call
- “The bottom of the door frame has gone soft.”
- What we found
- Rot in the bottom six inches of the jamb from meltwater and salt sitting at the threshold. The framing behind was still dry.
- What it took
- Rotten section cut out, new timber scarfed in, primed and sealed. Caught a season later it would have been framing.
Fourth question
Why does this keep happening in Indiana?
Four things move an Indiana door, and only one of them is the door.
Humidity in summer, dry heat in winter
Indiana swings from genuinely humid summers to heated interiors that are extremely dry. Timber doors and jambs take on moisture and give it back every year, so the same door binds in August and shows daylight in January. The right repair accounts for both.
Clay soil and frost heave
Much of the state sits on clay that swells and shrinks, and winter frost lifts stoops, porches and slabs. Both rack openings slowly out of square, which is why a door that hung perfectly for a decade starts catching in one corner.
Salt and meltwater at the threshold
Months of salting means brine on boots running onto thresholds and sitting there. It corrodes sweeps and hardware and rots jamb bottoms, which is where almost every Indiana exterior door eventually fails.
Limestone and masonry stoops
A great deal of Indiana housing has limestone or brick steps and sills at its exterior doors. Masonry holds water against timber far longer than you would expect, and a stoop that drains toward the door rather than away from it will rot a jamb bottom every few years.
Fifth question
What is involved, and how long does it take?
Most door work is adjustment. The variable is whether water got in.
If we think there is rot behind what you can see, we tell you before we open anything up and give you a price for both outcomes. We never start a small job and present a large one afterwards.
Coverage
Door repair across Indiana
A mobile service covering the whole state. Pick your town below, or call and we will come to you.
Door Repair Across Indiana
Anything else
What else should I know?
My door suddenly catches at the top corner.
Classic sign of a dropped slab or a frame that has moved. Hinge repair and realignment usually solve it without touching the door itself.
Should I plane the door?
We would rather you did not, and we will explain why before you do. It commits you to one season's dimensions permanently.
Can you fix a door that will not lock?
Yes, and it is one of our most common calls. Usually the latch no longer meets the strike, which is alignment rather than a lock fault.
My house is old and nothing is square.
Those are exactly the doors worth repairing. A modern prehung unit frequently will not fit an opening that has been moving for a century.
Do you work on interior doors too?
Yes — passage doors, closet bypass and bifold doors, and pocket doors.
What about storm doors?
Yes. Closers, latches, hinges and panel swaps are all routine, and in an Indiana winter a working storm door earns its keep.
Everything else we do
Other repairs we handle
Windows and doors are the whole business, so whatever has failed, it is on this list.
Tell us where the door is catching
Free estimates across Indiana, and a firm price before anything is touched.