- Service
- Door repair
- Typical visit
- 1–3 hours
- Common fault
- Dropped slab or drifted strike
- Estimate
- Free, price fixed first
Door service
Door Repair
The slab is the part least likely to be at fault, and the part everyone blames. Planing it solves this August and creates next January.
Symptom index
Find your symptom
Where a door catches tells you what moved. You can narrow this down yourself before anyone arrives.
Catching at the top corner
The slab has dropped on its hinges. By far the most common door fault we attend.Hinge repair
Dragging on the floor
Hinges sagging, or a threshold that has lifted or worn down.Hinges or threshold
Will not latch
The latch no longer meets the strike after the door or frame moved.Strike alignment
Latches only if you push hard
The strike is close but not right. A few millimetres of adjustment away.Strike alignment
Hinge screws spin
They have lost their grip in dried-out jamb timber. Longer screws into framing fix it.Hinge screws
Daylight along the bottom
Sweep worn flat or the threshold has dropped. Immediate difference when corrected.Sweep or threshold
Daylight down one side
The slab is no longer parallel with the jamb, usually after the opening moved.Rehang
Draught with no visible gap
Weatherstrip compressed flat and no longer springing back when the door shuts.Weatherseal
Sticks in summer, loose in winter
Timber taking on and giving up moisture across the Kansas range. Adjustment, not planing.Seasonal adjustment
Soft timber at the jamb bottom
Water has been standing where it should have drained. Worth acting on before it spreads.Rot repair
Door swings open or shut by itself
The frame is out of plumb, or a hinge pin needs adjusting.Rehang
Storm door will not stay shut
Closer worn or its bracket has pulled loose from the frame.Closer
How it works
Four parts, and the slab is rarely one of them
A hung door is a slab, a frame, hardware and a seal. Diagnosis is mostly a matter of noticing where it rubs.
01 / The slab
The door itself. It swells, shrinks and occasionally warps, but it outlives everything attached to it and is almost never the thing that failed.
02 / The frame
Two jambs and a head, shimmed into a rough opening. When a Kansas house moves on clay soil, this moves with it and the opening goes out of square.
03 / The hinges
Three screws a leaf carrying the entire weight. In dried-out jamb timber those screws lose their bite, and the slab drops a few millimetres.
04 / The strike
The plate the latch enters. A couple of millimetres of tolerance, which is why a dropped slab stops a perfectly good lock from working.
05 / The seal
Weatherstrip and sweep. In Kansas wind, a flattened seal is not a minor comfort issue; it is the draught running through the hallway.
06 / The threshold
Takes rain, meltwater, grit and boots. It wears and drops at the ends, and that is where most exterior doors here eventually fail.
Specification
What a door repair should include
The fault is almost never where the symptom is, so the inspection covers the whole assembly regardless of what you called about.
| Item | Status | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Contact points marked | Included | Where it actually rubs, measured rather than guessed from description. |
| Hinge screw purchase | Included | Whether screws are biting into framing or only into jamb trim. |
| Frame square measured | Included | Diagonals checked, because Kansas clay moves openings and that changes the fix. |
| Strike register | Included | Whether the latch enters cleanly or is riding on the plate edge. |
| Weatherstrip compression | Included | Tested with paper around the full perimeter to map where it leaks. |
| Sweep and threshold | Included | Height, wear and whether it still seals at the ends where water collects. |
| Jamb bottoms probed | Included | For soft timber, before quoting work that assumes sound wood. |
| Drainage at the sill | Included | Whether water runs away from the door or toward it. |
| Written fixed price | Included | Including a stated price for rot work if we think we will find it. |
| Replacement doors | Not offered | We do not sell them. When replacement is genuinely right, we say so and you call elsewhere. |
Kansas conditions
What Kansas does to a door
Moving ground, moving timber and relentless wind.
01
Expansive clay moves the opening
Eastern and south-central Kansas sit on clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. Houses move with it season by season, and openings rack slowly out of square. A door that hung perfectly for a decade starts catching in one corner, and adjustment within the opening is the fix rather than a new door.
02
Humid east, dry west
An entry door in Kansas City swells shut in August humidity. The same door in Garden City shrinks and gaps in dry air. That is why planing is the wrong answer: it commits the door permanently to one set of conditions.
03
Wind load on exterior doors
Kansas wind puts real pressure on an entry door. A latch that only just engages will rattle in a gale, and a seal that has flattened lets wind-driven rain and dust through a gap you cannot see.
04
Water and grit at the threshold
Driving rain, winter treatment and dust all collect at the base of a door. Where a stoop drains toward the house rather than away, the jamb bottoms rot — and that is where most Kansas exterior doors eventually fail.
Workmanship
Five ways door work gets done badly
Doors attract more bad fixes than anything else in a house, mostly because the bad fixes look like they worked.
01
Planing the edge
It solves August and creates January. Timber removed to clear a swollen door leaves a gap you cannot close when it shrinks back, and there is no undoing it.
02
Short screws in the top hinge
The standard screws reach jamb trim, not framing. Replacing like for like in dried-out timber means the slab drops again within months.
03
Moving the strike instead of the door
Chasing a dropped slab by cutting the strike plate lower works until the slab drops further, and now the jamb has a hole in it.
04
Caulking the gap
Sealing around a door that no longer closes square traps water in the joint and stops the door moving as it is supposed to. It also has to be cut out before the real repair.
05
Replacing a door into an out-of-square opening
A standard prehung unit fitted into a racked opening has to be packed and shimmed, and it ends up fitting no better than the door that was taken out.
Coverage
Door repair across Kansas
A mobile service covering the whole state, east to west. Pick your town below, or call and we will come to you.
Door Repair Across Kansas
Questions
Door repair questions
Q1
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.
Q2
Should I plane the door down?
We would rather you did not, and we will explain why before you do. It commits you permanently to one season's dimensions.
Q3
Cold air comes in under the front door.
Either the sweep has worn flat or the threshold has dropped. Both are quick, inexpensive repairs with an immediate effect on a windy night.
Q4
The bottom of the frame has gone soft.
Water has been standing where it should have drained. Confined to the jamb bottom it is a cut-out and rebuild; once it reaches framing the job is larger.
Q5
Our house has settled and nothing is square.
Common on Kansas clay. Those are exactly the doors worth repairing, because a replacement unit would have to be packed into the same moved opening.
Q6
Do you work on storm doors?
Yes — closers, latches, hinges and panel swaps. In a Kansas wind a storm door that will not latch is also a door that will eventually tear off its hinges.
Related
Other repairs we handle
Windows and doors are the whole business, so whatever has failed, it is on this list.
Next step
Tell us where the door is catching
Free estimates across Kansas, with a fixed written price before anything is touched.