Pro Handyman Blog

A damaged door leads homeowners to ask if it needs to be replaced or if it can be repaired. My answer is that it depends. If the door is an interior door and you can glue the split back together, I would say it is worth repairing. However, if it is an exterior door with a split, I would replace it. You don’t want to compromise safety.

Repairing a split in an interior door requires some adhesive and clamps. Most interior doors are hollow core doors with a wood perimeter. Realize that the perimeter may not be solid wood, but rather a fiberboard product like MDF (medium density fiberboard).

You want to get the wood glue down into the split so that the repair holds. A split in a door usually occurs along the edge. It may be necessary to slightly open the split with a putty knife or standard screwdriver and squirt some glue into the crevice. Apply more glue than you think you need so that the split is full. You can squeeze the damaged area with your hand to work the glue down into the area.

Use clamps to clamp the damaged area closed. I like mini bar clamps because you can operate them with one hand and they have great holding power. They also have cushioned jaws so that they will not damage the surface. You can also use “C” clamps, but be careful not to squeeze them too hard or you will damage the door. If you are going to use C-clamps, you can use wood strips along the edge and clamp the strips to the door edge. This will distribute the clamping pressure uniformly along the entire length of the edge. Let the glue dry for at least 24 hours before removing the clamps.

We aren’t talking about rocket science here, removing a door knob is easy and should take you under five minutes.

A door knob is held in place with screws on the interior. If you are lucky, the screws will be in plain view around the handle. Some door knobs have a decorative cover over the screws that you will need to pop off. You will probably see a small opening in the cover and you can pop it off with a small screwdriver.

Once the cover is removed you will see the two screws. Remove the screws and both sides of the knob will pull away from the door. All that will be left will be the latch mechanism. It takes two screws to remove this as well.

Look at the edge of the door where the latch juts out from the door. There will be screws here that hold the latch to the door. Unscrew these screws and the latch mechanism will pull out of the door.

If you are going to install a new door knob, the process is simply reversed. Install the latch mechanism first and then the two door knob halves. Check the backset of the latch to make sure it will fit the door. Many latches have adjustable backsets to accommodate different distances.

A door stop is such a simple thing. It screws into either the baseboard or the door itself and stops the doorknob from banging into the wall. If they come loose, it is usually due to someone being gruff with them (small children love to stomp on them during a tantrum).

Some are ridged and simply screw into the surface. If someone steps on it, it will damage the hole and the easiest fix is to relocate the door stop right next to the old location so that the rim covers the old hole.

If you have a spring door stop, these have a detachable base that gets screwed into the surface first and then the actual door stop gets threaded into the base. These are pretty durable because if someone steps on them, they don’t break. These will come loose most often in a metal door. If yours is loose, you can try to slightly tighten the screw that holds the base plate to the surface, or use a slightly larger diameter screw. When the base plate is resecured, thread the spring door stop back into it.

If you want to avoid damage to baseboard or doors from the ridged door stops, you could always replace them with the spring-type.

Many of us have door thresholds that have seen better days. In my neck of the woods, a metal threshold with an adjustable wood strip is the norm. When people come into the house that small wood strip must have a big target on it because that is where everyone steps. Dirty shoes, wet shoes, you name it and it grinds away at what was an attractive piece of wood. Over time it gets to looking like a wicked stepsister.

It’s really an easy fix to make the wood strip look nice again, but you will need to do a little prep work first. Give the strip a light sanding. Start with a medium grit sandpaper and then move to a fine grit. You don’t want to totally strip the piece down to bare wood, rather just knock off the damaged areas and get everything level again. You might see stained areas from water, so just hit it with a light sanding.

After the sanding, use a cloth and some stain. Dab the cloth into the stain and rub it onto the wood. You can go heavy or light on the stain, just be consistent with it so that the color is uniform. The wood will absorb the stain and you will get a nice rich color from the wood. This will be a normal maintenance item, but fortunately it doesn’t take long to do.

At some point, you will have a cabinet door that will sag and look like it’s ready to fall off of the cabinet. You can lift it up and it will fall right back down. Here are a few ideas on how you can repair this.

Cabinets these days are not made with the finest of materials. For the most part, only the frames of the doors and boxes are solid…the rest of the material is fiberboard or a close cousin of it.

If a cabinet door is sagging, the reason will be at the hinges. Although the hinges may be damaged, the wood that the hinges are attached to are most likely the culprit. I would first look at the hinges just to make sure they are straight. If they are warped, remove them and either replace them or hammer them back into shape.

Now look at the wood. Most likely, the screw holes are reamed out and may no longer be able to hold a screw. There are a couple of things you can do here. Try using a larger screw. You want to get into some undamaged wood. You can use a longer screw (pre-drill it first to avoid splitting the wood), or you can use a fatter screw with larger threads. Either of these methods will allow the screw to bite into new wood.

Your other option is to fill the damaged hole and reinstall the same screw. You can use several toothpicks or a wood golf tee for this. Smaller holes like these are perfect for a few toothpicks. Slather up the toothpicks with glue and stuff them into the hole. Wait for the glue to dry and then reinstall the hinge and screws.

Occasionally you will notice that your door will bind at a particular area. You could make adjustments to hinges or knuckles and try to figure out why this is happening, or you could grab a block plane.

Sometimes a door will bind due to weather. If it is humid for a certain period of time, you may find that the door sticks. This condition will often disappear once the humidity goes away, but if it bothers you, you can plane the door.

Block planes come in many sizes, but more importantly is how well the plane is tuned. A well tuned block plane can shave wood thin enough so that you can read your morning newspaper through it. So wherever your door is binding, you can take thin successive passes and get the door to open and close without removing very much material. Of course, you will have to touch up the paint when you are done.

It’s easier if you remove the door from the hinges and plane the edge as it is held on the floor. However, if I can plane a door while it remains on the hinges, that is just one less step I have to do. Always use two hands when you plane, even if the plane fits in the palm of your hand. You will have more control over the cuts this way. I generally don’t plane past the edge of the door as this will tear out the end grain on the door. If you need to plane at the corner, start at the corner and plane inward. Also, turn the plane so that the blade is at an angle. It will take smaller shavings of wood this way and make it easier to push through the wood. It is better to take many small shavings than one big one that you may regret later.

Painting doors is not a glamorous job, but questions arise about whether or not you should remove the door hardware before painting. It all comes down to personal preference and whether you thing masking the hardware is faster than removing it.

I would not recommend removing the door off of the hinges. So the quick answer for the hinges is to either paint them or cover them with tape. Personally, I don’t like how painted hinges look, especially if you have attractive hinges.

If you are using a sprayer, you will need to either remove the door knob and latch or cover them with masking tape and paper. If you asked 100 painters which way they preferred, you would probably find that 50% of them would cover them, and 50% would remove them. If you choose to remove them, you will need to cover them or place them in a room not being painted as the dry fall might land on them and you will have some cleaning to do.

Using tape and paper to cover them is fine, but if you don’t completely cover the surface, you will be cleaning paint off of the unit. Using standard masking tape works fine, but it is sometimes difficult to remove and will often leave a residue behind. Painters tape is more expensive, but it removes easier and doesn’t leave behind a residue, which will lessen your clean-up time.

I can’t tell you how many houses I go into and there are holes in the drywall from door knobs. These holes could be avoided with a simple door stop.

A typical doorstop takes a whopping 2 minutes to install and will save you a lot of anguish when trying to repair a drywall hole. The only question is if the doorstop should be installed on the door or on the baseboard of the wall it would potentially damage. I’ve seen it both ways and it probably comes down to a matter of preference.

If I had to choose, the wood at the base of the door is probably a little stronger than the MDF (medium density fiberboard) that the baseboard is likely made of. This means that in the event you stepped on the doorstop, the base of the door may give a little more support to the doorstop than the baseboard would.

Installing it is the same no matter the location. It’s easier if you pre-drill a small hole for the threads to screw into. Line up the door to the baseboard and make sure that the rubber tip of the doorstop will hit where you want it to, then drill the small hole. You can turn the doorstop in by hand until it is snug.

Adding a mirror to a bedroom door makes a lot of sense. You can make it as big as the door, or nearly so, and see yourself from head to toe. The only caution is to make sure the mirror is secured sufficiently enough to the door not to break.

Installing the mirror to the door will depend on what type of mirror you buy. Some framed mirrors are sold with the specific intent of mounting to a door. This style of mirror is lightweight and can be mounted to the door with screws and adhesive. Make sure if you are using screws that you are screwing into some solid material. Installing a screw into a hollow core door will not hold. Screwing into a solid core door will offer more meat for the screw threads to bite into.

I would use a lightweight mirror and use adhesive and clips to mount it to the door. You can buy mirror clips at any home center. They are shaped like the letter “L” and have a groove that the mirror slides into. As you tighten the clip it clamps down on the edge of the mirror. These clips combined with adhesive should make for a lasting hold.

A sagging door can be cause all kinds of headaches. Exterior doors are heavy anyway, and when you need to lift the door up to open it, it’s a real chore. On an exterior door, you may even see daylight at the top of the door on the strike side. So how do you correct this problem so that there is no daylight and the door opens and closes correctly?

Many people will start with shimming behind the bottom hinge to make up for the difference. You may end up doing this, but on an older door, I would first look to the top hinge. Your repair may be as easy as replacing a screw on the top hinge. The hinge is held in place with short screws that hold the hinge to the door and the jamb. You want to focus on the side that holds the hinge to the jamb.

The top hinge usually has four screws that secure it to the jamb. Remove the 2^nd screw from the top and replace it with a 3-4 inch deck screw. The idea here is to screw past the jamb and into the house framing. When the screw reaches the frame it will pull the top of the door back into place and eliminate the gap. You may still need to shim behind the bottom hinge, but the longer screw trick works very well.