How To Repair Country Doors After Winter

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Many summer residents know well how difficult it is to use the doors in a country house after winter. The doors do not open and close well, then they creak, or they generally jam. Here are some tips to help you troubleshoot the most common problems.

When the door creaks

To get rid of the squeak, you just need to lubricate the hinges with machine oil. Place an ax blade or some kind of wedge under the door to make a lever, and use it to lift it on its hinges. Then inject a few drops of machine oil into the gaps created around the hinge pins (see Figure 1). Repeat this operation from time to time, and you will forget about the boring squeak.

If you suddenly do not have machine oil on hand, you can use a piece of lead from a soft, simple pencil instead. Under the weight of the door, they turn into a fine powder, and graphite is an excellent lubricant that lasts a long time.

The door opens or closes by itself

This indicates that the loops are incorrectly attached: not strictly vertically, but slightly obliquely. The door swings open, which means it is tilted away from the door frame. Place a piece of cardboard of the correct thickness under any of the halves of the upper hinge (see Figure 2). This is usually enough for the hinges to line up.

If the door closes by itself, it is tilted towards the door frame. Place a piece of cardboard under the bottom hinge.

The door is jammed

The most common cause is loose door hinges. Replace the screws on which they are attached with longer ones. You can also use old ones, strengthening their nests. To do this, hammer in pieces of wire washcloth for washing dishes or hammer wooden plugs with glue into the holes for the screws.

Sometimes the door gets jammed also because the house has settled down and the door frame is deformed. In this case, the only way out is to give the door an appropriate slope. Place a cardboard spacer under one of the hinges as recommended above. If the bottom of the door is jammed, place a spacer under the top hinge and vice versa.

The door can also jam due to the fact that the gap between it and the door frame on the hinge side is too large. In this case, you need to deepen the hinge slots and "drown" them a little (see Figure 3). And if the skew of the door or door frame is noticeable, then it is enough to "drown" only the hinge against which it is jammed. If it is necessary to remove a rather thick layer of wood, then the door will have to be removed in order to process it from the side of the hinges, since it is much more difficult to do this from the side of the lock. After all, removing the lock is much more troublesome than hinges.

You can remove the door from the hinges like this: open it completely, place a lever under it, for example a crowbar or an ax blade, then take the door by the middle and, swinging slightly in the hinges, lift it. If the door frame does not allow this, then, using a beard or thick nail, knock the pins out of the hinges and carefully remove the door (see Figure 4). You need to start from the bottom loop.

Draw a line along the edge of the door from the hinge side to which you want to remove the layer of wood (see Figure 5). The work should be done with a sharpened plane, but better with a rasp so as not to remove excess. After processing, clean this edge with fine sandpaper and tint to match the color of the door. It is necessary to hang the doors on the hinges and install the pins in them.

The door hits the floor or threshold

If the door hinges are in order, but the door still sagged, try putting washers or homemade washers twisted from steel wire between the upper and lower halves of the hinges and lubricate them with machine oil. When that doesn't help, rearrange the hinges a little higher.

The door dried up and stopped closing tightly. Of course, you can nail a piece of leather, felt or rubber onto the door or on the jamb. But all these linings are fragile and spoil the look of the door. Therefore, it is much safer and more aesthetically pleasing to stick or nail a thin wooden plank onto the end of the door. The heads of nails must be "drowned". Sand the bar and paint it.

The door is difficult to lock and unlock

First of all, determine how far the lock tongue is offset from the hole in the strike plate. Rub the tab with chalk or place a piece of carbon paper under it - prints will show where it goes. This can sometimes be recognized by the scratches that the tab leaves on the striker. If it turns out that the tongue falls below the hole, check to see if the door has sagged due to the loose hinges. In this case, reinforce the hinges.

If this does not help, or if the hole turns out to be offset to the side, the easiest way out is to unscrew the striker plate and expand its hole with a file. Just try not to remove too much, otherwise the locked door will rattle.