How to Repair a Door That Won't Stay Shut

Hi, I'm Mike with House on the Mend. Today we're going to be repairing this door. The latch isn't clicking properly, so unless you come over here and wrench the door upwards, it won't stay seated. So there's an issue we're going to have to fix. Now normally when I start with a repair like this, I always close the door on the inside of the door so that I can look all the way around the door frame to see if the door may be off-center. And if it is, then it's a simple job of coming in and tightening the screws on the door jamb or shimming them out in order to camp the door so it works properly. In this case, as you can see, the lines are perfect on the door jamb and the door. So the issue is right here at the striker plate. And as you see in this close-up video, the door latch itself is striking that striker plate and wearing away below the center mark. And that's obviously going to have to be adjusted. So what we're going to do is remove this plate and we're going to chisel out a little bit lower in the door jamb itself. Reset the plate in its proper spot. Once the door is functioning perfectly, we'll paint that area to disguise any tool marks and we should have a good functioning door. So let's zoom in and get started. So the first thing we're going to do is remove this striker plate and see just how much we're going to have to cut out of the door jamb. I can also see a little of this same blemish area here, which is the door lock scraping across this striker plate. I can also see a little of that right down here at the bottom of this notch that was originally cut out. So it's possible we'll have to take some of this area out bringing the striker plate down. Hopefully not too much because we don't have much here to put another screw in. So I'm going to open and shut the door a couple times and see just how much we have to work with or to remove. I can see we're going to need to remove about an eighth of an inch or so. I think that's where we'll start. So I've got my tools all set up. We're going to mask this area off since we'll be creating some debris and then we'll get started. All right, since we're going to be lowering this plate down about an eighth of an inch, we're going to have to fill in these holes. Otherwise, if we lowered the plate down and we left those holes there, the screws would just bring it right back up into place. So the first thing we're going to do is drill out those holes so we can put some wooden dowels in there as a filler. But as always, I like to clean up my mess as we go. So I'm just going to take this regular old grocery bag with some tape on it, tape right around here like that, and that way the debris will fall right into the bag and I'll have less cleanup afterwards. So this is a quarter inch drill bit and then we're going to fill it with quarter inch dowels and glue. I always do this first so that while I'm working around the area, the glue can be drying and we'll be ready faster to redrill some holes and get going. Now to make this work, all we have to do is put a little bit of glue on here like so, put that right into place like that, twisting it around to make sure the glue is evenly distributed all the way in until it bottoms out and then a little piece off. Next one. All right, now the next thing we want to do is lower this original cut out about an eighth of an inch. So I am just going to start tapping in here with the chisel. I'll take my time give us about an eighth of an inch more clearance. This particular piece of door jam trim is just medium density fiberboard so since it's interior that's fine. If it was exterior we would want solid wood or metal. All right, let's test that. See how we did first if we have to go lower or not. That's going to be perfect. All right, we'll get set back up and we're going to mark an area here and scribe it to lower down that striker plate about the same amount. All right, so we're all set back up to keep ourselves nice and clean. Now we're going to scribe a line using our striker plate. We want to lower it about that much right there. So I'm going to use the area that's already cut out of the door jam as a way to brace that and then I lower it down the amount that I want and now that it's nice and braced and straight I'm going to scribe right here with this box cutter blade so I know exactly where to chisel. Good. Now this right here since it's a medium density fiberboard I can get some more work done just with this blade. Good. I'm just gonna tap in with this nice sharp chisel until I get right about the same depth that's already cut out. That's great. I'll get this stuff out of the way because we're going to paint up there. Let's check our work here. That looks good. Lower down enough that I think that's going to work. I think it's this dowel right here. Shave off a little of that. Much better. Okay. All right, so the next thing we want to do is dress up these areas where the paint is gone. So let's get set up. I've got some primer and we'll prime back up these areas that might show through the striker plate such as that up there, this top area and down here at the bottom. All right. I've got the area all cleaned up. I have some primer here that I mixed outside in the garage with my electric drill so it's nice and mixed up. The primer is really nice and thick so I usually get one good coat on there that'll get into this medium density fiberboard really well because it's very porous. This is all aesthetics which obviously paint usually is but I just don't want the customer to look inside that striker plate and see a bunch of unpainted area. All right now no one wants to watch paint dry so I'm gonna clean all this up and then I'm pretty impatient when it comes to my customers getting their stuff done and not wasting their time so I see a hairdryer right over there. I'm gonna get that hairdryer and hasten this drying process enough that we can get that striker plate back on. All right the paint has dried and while that was going on I cleaned off this striker plate to get some of that metal off of there so it looks a little bit better. Now it's time to secure this back into place so we're going to put it against its original cutout and down towards the area that we cut out and now since we put those dowel rods in there we'll be able to drill for new screw holes. All right now that we have those holes drilled I'm going to put this striker plate in and do our final test. Much better. So now you know the steps that it takes to fix a door if it wasn't routed out and hung properly. Now if you don't feel like taking on a project this daunting I understand and if that's the case and you live in Las Vegas please give me a call. I'd be happy to come fix your door for you. Until next time thank you for watching.