Doors & hardware
Your door only sticks in summer. Don't plane it.
Wood doors swell in Piedmont humidity and shrink back in winter. Trimming in August gives you a rattling, drafty door by January.
Every August we get calls about doors that will not close, and every August a proportion of those callers have already been out to the garage with a planer. By February they have a door with a quarter-inch gap that rattles in the frame and lets cold air through, and there is no undoing it.
Wood is hygroscopic. It absorbs moisture from humid air and gives it back in dry air, and it changes dimension doing so — mostly across the grain, which on a door means across its width. In the Piedmont, where summer humidity is sustained and winter air indoors is dry from heating, that seasonal swing is enough to move a door by a noticeable amount.
How to know it's humidity
- It closed fine in March and stopped closing in July
- It rubs at the top of the latch side, or along the top edge — the widest dimension moves most
- Other wood doors in the house are doing it too, or drawers have got tight
- The gap is even at other times of year
- It is a solid wood or wood-veneer door, not a hollow-core or a fiberglass exterior door
Planing removes material permanently. The door will fit beautifully in August and by January it has shrunk back plus the amount you removed, leaving a gap that rattles, leaks air, and on an exterior door costs you money every month. Wood does not grow back.
What to do instead
Find the actual contact point
Close the door slowly and watch where it touches, or run a slip of paper around the gap until it binds. It is usually a two- or three-inch stretch, not the whole edge.
Try the hinge adjustment first
A thin shim behind one hinge leaf shifts the door in the opening. Shimming the top hinge pulls the top of the latch side in; shimming the bottom does the opposite. It is reversible, which is the whole point.
Check the strike before touching the door
If the door closes but will not latch, the door probably does not need anything — the strike is the thing that has drifted.
Wait until winter to judge it
If it frees up on its own in October, it was humidity and it needs no permanent work at all. If it still binds in January, then it is a geometry problem and worth correcting properly.
If you must remove material, do it in winter
At the driest point of the year, taking off the minimum. Then you know you are not cutting into seasonal movement, and seal the cut edge so it does not absorb moisture faster than the rest.
The exception
Exterior doors that stick in summer are worth looking at more carefully, because if water is getting into the bottom edge or the frame, the swelling may not be atmospheric humidity at all. A door absorbing water from a leaking threshold or a failed sill will keep getting worse rather than following the season. If yours binds worse after rain rather than just in humid weather, that is a different problem.
From our own jobs
Keep reading
Related
Why your door won't latch
The most common repair request there is, and the most commonly fixed the expensive way. It's almost never the lock — it's a sixteenth of an inch of geometry.
A seasonal maintenance calendar for the Piedmont
Humid summers, freeze-thaw winters, red clay and heavy tree cover. What to check and when, written for Iredell, Catawba, Lincoln and Mecklenburg counties specifically.
Next step
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