Are your doors acting a little strange?

Is it just me, or do you sometimes feel like your home is occupied by an unseen force capable of opening or closing your doors at will? There are a couple of possibilities that come to mind. It could be that there are indeed spirits living with you and they feel a particular need for a door to remain open or closed, perhaps it is a little drafty on the “other side”. Perhaps your previous owner or realtor neglected to inform you that your house sits on a sacred native american burial site.

Although these could be possible answers to your problem, I think I have the real answer. When installing a door, it is important to secure it in a vertical or “plumb” position, meaning it is straight up. What happens most of the time is that the door is slightly out of plumb making the door lean inward or outward causing it to swing from its own weight. If your door moves quite a bit it is leaning more than it should.

So where do you go from here? You could hire a carpenter to remove and re-install the frame, causing the need for re-painting the jamb and trim and any possible number of things that could suffer collateral damage. You could do this yourself with the same results, or you can do this simple repair.

Remove one of the hinge pins of the affected door, usually using a hammer and nail to the underside of the hinge pin to drive it up and out of it place. Take the pin and place it on a hard surface like the concrete sidewalk or driveway, (guys, don’t do this on the kitchen counter without first concocting a good story for your wife about the counter got that mark on it), and hit the middle of the hinge pin with the hammer. This will put a slight bend in the pin. Place the pin back in the hinge and drive it back in fully, the bend in the pin will add friction to the motion of the door and will stop it from moving on its own. If your situation warrants, do this to more than one pin, or perhaps by bending it a little more.

This is an easy fix to a common problem. I hope this helps.

~ by glennforstner on January 7, 2011.