Expert: Stephen Major (Owner--Major Design Group) - 8/7/2007

Question
Hello, we had our house framed in the 100 plus degree heat last summer and hardly any of the door and window openings are square..not saying the heat caused it, but...

The worst one is my front glass door with sidelights..most of the other doors I was able to drive lag screws into the 2 x 4 framing and help pull the door in the direction to assist opening without too much effort..a couple I have had to trim the rubber seal on the bottom (I am speaking of exterior doors), but the front door will not allow any lag screws due to the sidelights..so we have taken the door down, chipped wood out under the top and center hinge to help square it up and it worked great for awhile, now it sticks at the top 50% again..so, I sanded the frame and it has helped some..there has to be a fix??...I am not beyond pulling it out entirely, if I had a plan once I got it out..I have a brick home so pulling it out is last resory?..any ideas??thanks, Jeff

Answer
Jeff,

This is unfortunate.  It sounds like your doors were installed in a hurry.  The fixes that you have already done should have been done by the installer.  It is common practice to connect the hinge directly to the framing with large screws.

For the front door with skylights this is impossible.  The whole assembly is probably out of square, like a parallelogram.  The only way to really fix this permanently is to remove the inside and outside trims exposing the full door frame and any space between the frame and the rough opening.  

If you can do this, you can use a pry bar on one or the other of the top corners to force the door into square.  Once in place, shim it well.  This procedure assumes that the sill is firmly attached.  It it isn't, then you can adjust on top and/or bottom.

Otherwise, you will just need to deal with the door itself,  planing, sanding, etc.  Not the best option.

Best of luck and let me know if you have additional questions.

--Steve Major