Idaho door & window repair
Door repair
Door Repair
The slab is the part least likely to be at fault.
A door that drags, will not latch or has dropped in its frame is almost always a hardware or alignment problem. Planing the edge treats the symptom and creates a draught.
Should I just plane it?
No. It will gap in winter and you cannot undo it.
Why does it stick in one corner?
The slab has dropped or the opening has moved.
Can a cold door be fixed?
Yes, and the seal is usually the cheapest fix in the house.
Start here
Four separate things, and people blame the only one they can see
A hung door is a slab, a frame, hardware and a seal. The slab is almost never the problem.
Older Idaho homes often hold doors that are no longer a standard size at all, having been planed, shimmed and rehung by several generations of owners. Those are exactly the doors that should be repaired — a modern prehung unit frequently will not fit the opening.
The slab
The door itself. It can swell, shrink or warp, but it outlives everything attached to it.
The frame
Two jambs, a head and a threshold, shimmed into a rough opening. When the house moves, this moves with it.
The hinges
Three screws per leaf holding the whole weight. In dry jamb wood those screws lose their grip, and the slab drops.
The latch and strike
Two halves that have to meet within a couple of millimetres. When the slab drops, they stop meeting.
The seal
Weatherstrip and sweep. In an Idaho winter a failed sweep is money leaving the building every hour.
Diagnosis
What is going on with the door
The place it catches tells you what moved.
| What you are seeing | What it usually means | What we do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Catching at the top corner | The slab has dropped on its hinges | Reinforce the hinge screws into framing and bring the slab back up |
| Dragging on the floor | Hinges sagging, or a threshold that has shifted | Reset the hinges and adjust or replace the threshold |
| Will not latch | The latch no longer meets the strike after the door moved | Reposition or rebuild the strike; new hardware rarely needed |
| Daylight around the edges in winter | Dry air has shrunk the slab and the weatherstrip has gone hard | Renew seals and sweep, and adjust the stops to suit |
| A draught along the bottom | Sweep worn flat or threshold dropped | Replace the sweep and reset the threshold height |
| Soft wood at the jamb bottom | Meltwater sitting where it should have drained | Cut out and rebuild the jamb bottom before it reaches framing |
Idaho conditions
What Idaho does to a door
Dry air, moving ground and a winter that finds every gap.
01
Very low humidity
Southern Idaho is high desert, and heated interiors are drier still. Wooden doors and jambs give up moisture year after year, so slabs shrink, joints open and hinge screws lose their bite in dried-out jamb wood.
02
Frost heave and settlement
Winter ground movement lifts and drops foundations and porches, and openings slowly rack out of square. A door that hung perfectly for a decade starts catching in one corner, and realignment is the fix.
03
Snow and ice at the threshold
Meltwater running under a door and refreezing wrecks sweeps and sills, and a dragging door scraping over a raised threshold makes it worse every time it opens.
04
Heating costs a sealed door saves
In a state with real winters, a door that does not seal is the cheapest expensive problem in the house. Weatherstripping is among the highest-return repairs we do.
The honest version
Repair or replace a door
Most doors we are asked to replace do not need replacing.
Repair is the right call when
- The slab is sound and the frame is repairable
- Hinges, latch, strike or seals have failed
- The opening has moved but can be brought back into line
- Rot is confined to the jamb bottom or threshold
- The door is non-standard and a replacement would not fit the opening
Replacement is genuinely warranted when
- The slab is warped beyond adjustment or delaminated
- Rot has reached the framing or subfloor
- A steel door has corroded through at the bottom
- The frame has racked beyond what shimming and rehanging can correct
Planing a door down is the one thing we will push back on. It solves August and creates January.
What the visit looks like
Usually an hour or two
Before we arrive
Tell us where it catches
Top corner, bottom edge, latch side — each points somewhere different and tells us what to bring.
On arrival
Door, frame, hinges, threshold
Checked together, because the fault is rarely where the symptom is.
Before any work
A firm price
Including an honest read on any rot before we open anything up.
Same visit
The repair
Most alignment and hardware work finishes on site. Rot repair depends on how much wood has to come out.
Where we work
Door repair across Idaho
We are a mobile service covering the whole state. Pick your town below, or call and we will come to you.
Door Repair Across Idaho
Questions
Door repair questions
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 solves it without touching the door.
Should I plane the door down?
We would rather not. Planing removes material permanently to compensate for something that moved, and when it moves back you are left with a gap you cannot close.
Cold air comes in under my front door.
Either the sweep has worn flat or the threshold has dropped. Both are quick, inexpensive repairs with an immediate effect on comfort and heating.
The bottom of the frame has gone soft.
Water has been sitting where it should have drained. Rot confined to the jamb bottom or threshold is a straightforward cut-out and rebuild; once it reaches framing the job is larger.
My house is old and nothing is square.
Those are the doors most worth repairing. A replacement prehung unit often will not fit an opening that has been moving for a century.
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 new lock.
Everything else we do
Other repairs we handle
Doors and windows are the whole business, so whatever has failed, it is on this list.