Since we just wrapped up the biggest home improvement project we’ve had in years, we decided to keep the next few jobs more low key. There’s a laundry list of little things I need to fix around the house. The most annoying one by far involves a couple of our interior doors.
**But if you like our furniture builds, you’ll be happy to hear we’re starting another smaller build later this week.**
But let’s get back to the doors. We have two interior doors that have a problem. They don’t stay shut. One of them is our first floor powder room door. So when we have company, somebody invariably gets a door opened on them by accident. No fun.
To get the door to close you have to lift the door by the handle to get the lock to engage the strike plate. It’s gotten pretty annoying.
Now if you’ve been a reader for a while, you may remember we fixed this problem before on one of our closet doors. I’ll reuse one of the images from that post to explain how this works. We’re going to fix it differently this time around though.
Basically, the weight of the door over time can cause a gap at the top hinge to open up and will also close the gap at the bottom most hinge. When this shift happens, the lock no longer lines up with the strike plate. So to fix it, you need to lift the door back up.
So how do we fix it?
Well, the first time we wrote about this we used a piece of cardboard and stuffed it behind the hinge. That worked for a little while, but over time the door sag returned.
Here’s how we fixed it this time and for good.
How to Fix a Door that Won’t Shut
We’ll start by taking a quick look at our bathroom door jamb. You can see the gap between the door and the jamb is pretty tight at the bottom. It’s pretty much touching at the bottom of the door.
The gap at the top is pretty wide open.
Alright. So, the goal is to open up the gap at the bottom and close the gap at the top. We can do that by taking off the bottom hinge from the door jamb and shimming it out.
Here’s the bottom hinge.
We’ll remove the three screws on the jamb side.
Then I’m going to take some stainless steel washers and set one over each of the screw holes. If they won’t stay put for you, you’ll have to rest them on the screws.
Now I’m going to use some 1″ long stainless steel screws that I bought separately and I’ll reattach the hinge to the jamb. I’m not reusing the original screws since now they’re probably not long enough anymore.
With the hinge back in place, I’m all done. The door closes and latches normally. Success!
You can even see the bottom gap has opened up, which is why the door lock has lifted. We actually had to use two washers behind each hinge screw for our upstairs closet door.
I hope this post will help you fix any sagging door issues in your home! If you think this post is helpful, please share it!
Thanks!
