Door repair and installation

Door repairs

• Sticking doors: tighten hinges, shim, plane and reseal.
• Doors that will not latch: adjust or move strike plates.
• Sagging doors: longer hinge screws into framing.
• Loose or broken handles and locks: replace hardware.
• Sliding closet and pocket doors: rollers, tracks and guides.
• Sliding glass doors: rollers and track cleaning.

Hanging new doors

We hang new slab doors in existing frames, mortising hinges and boring for hardware to match. Pre-hung replacements in the same opening are also possible when the frame is damaged.

Exterior doors

Weatherstripping, door sweeps and thresholds keep heat, dust and smoke out. We replace worn ones and adjust the door so it seals properly.

Locks

We install new deadbolts and handles in existing bores, and smart locks that fit standard doors.

Interior doors in older homes

Solid-wood doors in older houses can be worth saving. They often stick because the house has settled or the door has swollen, not because the door is bad. Tightening hinges, adding a longer screw into the framing, or planing a high spot usually fixes them. We seal any edge we cut so it does not absorb moisture again.

Hollow-core doors from midcentury tracts are easy to replace when the skin is cracked or a hole has been punched through. We match the size and bore new holes for your hardware.

Closet and bifold doors

Bifold and sliding closet doors fall off their tracks when pivots, rollers or guides wear out. Replacement hardware is inexpensive, and we adjust the doors so they meet evenly and close without rubbing.

Why doors stop working

Hinge screws loosen in stripped holes, frames shift as houses settle, and wood absorbs moisture in winter and shrinks in summer. Exterior doors facing afternoon sun dry out and warp. Strike plates drift out of line with the latch.

Sliding doors gather grit in their tracks, which flattens rollers. Knowing the cause tells us whether to adjust, plane, shim or replace.

Interior versus exterior doors

Interior doors are usually hollow-core or solid-core slabs. Exterior doors are thicker, often solid wood, fiberglass or steel, and need weatherstripping, a threshold and a sweep to seal. When ordering a replacement slab, measure width, height and thickness, note the hinge side and the backset of the lock, and check whether hinge corners are round or square.

Security basics

A deadbolt is only as strong as its strike. Long screws in the strike plate and hinges, reaching the framing, make a door much harder to kick in. We install those along with new deadbolts and handles in existing bores.

What is outside our scope

New door openings, widened openings, structural header changes, rekeying and broken sliding-door glass are outside our scope. We handle hardware, adjustments, slabs and pre-hung swaps in existing openings.

Sliding glass doors

Most sliding patio doors ride on two adjustable rollers at the bottom of the moving panel. When a slider grinds, jumps or takes two hands, the rollers are usually flat or seized and the track is packed with grit. We lift the panel out, clean the track, replace the rollers with ones that match the door brand, and adjust the height so the panel meets the latch.

A bent aluminum track lip can often be straightened, or covered with a snap-on track cap. Screen doors on sliders also need their own small rollers and a spring tension adjustment to close cleanly.

Pre-hung replacement in an existing opening

When a frame is split, rotted at the bottom or badly out of square, a pre-hung door replaces the frame and slab together. We remove the old casing, pull the old unit, set the new one plumb and level with shims, fasten through the jambs into the framing, and reinstall or replace the casing.

On exterior doors, we flash and seal the sill so water cannot get under the threshold. The opening stays the same size, which keeps the job within handyman scope.

Questions to answer before ordering

• Swing: which way the door opens, viewed from the side it swings toward.
• Jamb width: the wall thickness, which varies between plaster and drywall houses.
• Fire-rated door between garage and house: the replacement must also be rated and self-closing in many homes.
• Glass inserts: tempered glass is required in many locations.

Send photos of both sides and the edge of the door, and we can confirm the right replacement.

Locks, levers and accessibility

Round knobs are hard to turn for anyone with arthritis or full hands. Lever handles fit the same bore and work with an elbow. We swap knobs for levers throughout a house, set the latch backset to match each door, and line up strike plates so every door clicks shut without a push.

For entry doors, a keypad deadbolt removes the need to fumble for keys, and most fit a standard 2-1/8 inch bore. If an existing bore is oversized or the edge is split, we install a reinforcement plate so the new lock sits tight. When several doors need new hardware, buying a matched set keyed alike saves carrying multiple keys.

Photo checklist