Sticking doors, binding windows and latches that miss
A door that drags in August and swings easily in January is reacting to Tennessee humidity. A door that has needed more force every month for a year is telling you something else.
What a racked frame does
The clues are in the gaps
Carpenters hang a door in an opening with four square corners. Let one jamb sink a quarter of an inch and the corners are square no longer. The opening leans like a parallelogram and the slab of wood inside it binds.
Shut the door and study the slot between its top edge and the head of the frame. Even all the way across is normal. A wedge, tight at the hinge side and open at the latch side or the reverse, means the frame is out of square. The latch bolt may strike above or below its plate. Some doors start to drift open or shut when you let go.
Windows have their own tells. A sash jams halfway, the lock halves stop meeting, or a strip of daylight appears where the frame meets the brick outside and the caulk has torn.
Rule these out
Everyday reasons a door sticks
Weather and wood
Summers here are warm and humid. A wooden door takes on moisture and swells, most of all on an unpainted top or bottom edge. If it frees up every winter, humidity is the likely cause.
Hardware and paint
Hinge screws back out over the years and the door droops on its latch edge. Tightening them, or fitting one longer screw into the wall stud, cures many doors. Layers of paint do the same on older trim.
Recent work
New flooring raises the threshold. A new roof, a remodel or a house that has just been levelled can all shift how doors hang for a while.
Two minutes with a notepad
Walk the house before you phone
- Is it one door, or a cluster of them at one end of the building?
- Does the slot over the door narrow from hinge to latch, or latch to hinge?
- Will the door stay where you leave it, or does it swing by itself?
- Is there a crack running up from a top corner of the frame?
- Does the floor through that doorway feel as if it falls away?
- Did the trouble arrive with a season, or has it only ever got worse?
Interior doors near the middle of a crawl space house often trace back to the supports under the main beam. Doors in outside walls more often trace back to the perimeter footing. The crawl space page covers the first case.
What happens next
Measuring, then repairing in the right order
An inspector will usually take floor heights through the affected rooms and, where there is a crawl space, go under the house to see what is holding up the floor beneath those doorways.
If support has been lost, the repair is underneath: resetting or adding crawl space posts, or piering a settled length of outside foundation. Doors are adjusted last, by a carpenter. A door planed to fit a leaning frame will show a gap if the floor is later raised, so it is worth waiting.
Questions
About doors, windows and foundations
Only one door sticks. Could that be the foundation?
It could, but one door alone is more often hinges, humidity or paint. A tapered gap, a crack above the frame and a second symptom close by are what make an inspection worthwhile.
The windows on the brick side of the house are hard to open. What should I look for?
Look outside at the joint between the window frame and the brick, and at the brick below the sill and above the head. Torn caulk, a widening gap or a stair-step crack near that window are worth reporting.
Is it worth having doors rehung while I wait?
Small adjustments at the hinges do no harm. Hold off on cutting doors down or rebuilding frames until floor readings have been taken.
One phone call
Speak with a foundation repair company near Murfreesboro
Mention the crack, the dip or the lean, name the room, and give the month you first spotted it. Whoever picks up belongs to a Middle Tennessee foundation outfit whose only tie to this website is the referral. They can pencil in an inspection and follow it with a written price.
A house that is cracking as you listen, a wall on the point of failing, gas in the air: everybody outside first, then 911 and the gas company.
Expect the call to be recorded. Two short pages cover the rest: who pays for referrals and what becomes of call details.