Door & Hardware Repair
Doors that stick, sag, rattle, or will not latch are usually a fifteen-minute diagnosis and an afternoon fix. We shim, plane, mortise, and align until every door in the house closes right.
You know which doors they are. The bathroom door you lift by the knob to latch. The bedroom door that drags a groove into the carpet. The back door that whistles in January. Doors are the most-used moving parts in your house, and they are usually the most neglected item on the fridge list. The Castle Construction handyman crew repairs, adjusts, and replaces interior and exterior doors and their hardware, and we fix the actual cause, not just the symptom that annoyed you this morning.
Why Doors Stick, and What We Do About It
A sticking door is a diagnosis, not a job description. Sometimes the wood has swollen with seasonal humidity and shrinks back every winter, which changes whether planing is the right call or an overcorrection you will regret in February. Sometimes the top hinge screws have stripped out of the jamb and the door is sagging into its own frame. Sometimes the house itself has settled and racked the opening. Each cause has a different fix, and guessing wrong means doing the work twice.
So we start by reading the door. Even gaps or tight spots around the perimeter tell the story: a tight top latch corner points at the hinges, uniform rubbing points at swelling, a twisted reveal points at the frame. The fix might be driving three-inch screws through the top hinge into the stud, shimming a hinge with a strip of cardstock, or a careful pass with a plane followed by sealing the raw edge so it stops drinking humidity. Fifteen minutes of diagnosis saves you a mangled door.
Hinges, Strikes, and Latch Alignment
Hinge work is quiet, fussy, and completely decisive for how a door behaves. Loose hinges get their screw holes repaired properly, hardwood plugs glued in and re-drilled, not toothpicks and hope, and the top hinge gets at least one long screw that reaches the framing behind the jamb, because that screw carries most of the load. New hinges get mortised flush into door and jamb so the door sits where it was designed to sit instead of springing against proud hardware.
Then there is the latch that will not catch, the most-ignored fault in any house. Usually the latch bolt is missing the strike plate opening by a sixteenth of an inch. We find the actual contact point, then move, file, or re-mortise the strike so the bolt seats without lifting, slamming, or body English. Deadbolts get the same treatment, because a deadbolt you have to jiggle is a deadbolt that does not get locked. When we finish, every door in the house closes with two fingers.
Knobs, Deadbolts, and Weatherstripping
Hardware swaps are quick wins when they are done right. New knobs and levers go on with the latch oriented correctly and the bore alignment checked, so they do not bind a year in. Deadbolt installs get a properly mortised strike backed with long screws into the framing, which is where most of the security actually lives. Exterior doors get weatherstripping and door sweeps fitted to seal without making the door hard to close, because a seal you have to fight is a seal that gets left ajar.
This is also the natural place to batch. If we are already at your front door, the loose handrail, the sticking storm door, and the mailbox hanging by one screw take minutes each, and our punch-out service is built to sweep all of it into one visit. Interior doors that get planed or patched can be touched up on the spot, since paint is one of our core trades. One trip, and every opening in the house works like it should.
- Passage and privacy knob or lever replacement
- Deadbolt installation with reinforced strike plates
- Hinge repair, re-mortising, and stripped screw fixes
- Weatherstripping, door sweeps, and draft sealing
- Pocket door and bifold track adjustment
- Strike alignment so every latch catches clean
Hollow Core, Solid Core, and Pre-Hung Installs
Knowing when to repair and when to replace starts with knowing what the door is. Hollow-core doors are two thin skins over a cardboard grid, light and cheap, and once a skin is punctured or delaminating, replacement usually beats repair. Solid-core and solid wood doors are worth real repair effort: they can be planed, patched, and rehung for decades. They also swing differently, block sound better, and demand hinges and screws that respect their weight. We will tell you which you own and what it is worth doing to it.
For replacements, we install both slab and pre-hung doors. A slab swap means transferring hinge mortises and hardware bores to a new door, precise layout work. A pre-hung unit means pulling the old jamb, setting the new frame plumb and square with shims at each hinge, and fastening through the shims so the frame cannot twist. Pre-hungs also mean new casing, which our trim and caulking crew handles in the same visit, caulked, filled, and ready for paint from Castle Construction.
Common Questions
Why does my door only stick in the summer?
Humidity. Wood doors absorb moisture and swell in humid months, then shrink back in winter. That is why aggressive planing in July gives you a rattling, drafty door in January. We fix seasonal sticking with a light, targeted trim at the actual rub point, then seal the raw edge so the door stops absorbing moisture there.
The screws in my top hinge keep coming loose. Can that be fixed?
Yes, permanently. Stripped holes get hardwood plugs glued in and re-drilled so the threads bite fresh wood, and the top hinge gets at least one three-inch screw driven through the jamb into the stud behind it. That screw carries most of the door weight, and once it is in framing, the sag stops coming back.
Is a damaged hollow-core door worth repairing?
Usually not, and we will say so. A hollow-core door is two thin skins over a cardboard core, so a hole or split skin means the structure is gone. Replacement slabs are inexpensive, and a clean swap with transferred hardware looks better than any patch. Solid-core and solid wood doors are a different story and almost always worth repairing.
Do you install pre-hung doors?
Yes, interior and exterior. We pull the old frame, set the new unit plumb and square with shims behind each hinge, fasten through the shims into framing, and adjust until the reveal is even and the latch catches without force. New casing goes on in the same visit, caulked and ready for paint or painted by us.
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