Barbie and Dan Lend a Hand Holding a Door Open

This past year I got some help in the shop and on installations from Dan, a friend of mine that entered the carpentry/woodworking field as a union framing carpenter. He is a hard worker, gets things done quick, cares about the quality of his work, and most importantly, taught me a few of his tricks.

His most recent bit of advice saved me a day or two of work and only took me minutes to complete (I really like that guy).

I have a relatively new house. It’s about three years old, and overall, I am happy with it. Since the beginning, though, there was one thing that drove me crazy, and I could never figure out an easy solution. My daughter Mira’s bedroom door was hung way out of plumb, it is leaning into the opening about 3/4″, and if left alone, it will swing almost closed. You open the door and it closes on its own.

I am sure the carpenter that installed the door let it slide because the door casing butts into another door casing and the straight casing looks better than casing with an angle cut. At least that’s what I tell myself. Truth is, he was probably flying along throwing up doors and plumb wasn’t too much of an issue. Either way, it is still annoying.

The only way I could see to fix the problem was to rehang the door. That meant remove the casing, remove the door frame and start over. That also meant hours of finish work including caulking and painting. And, after all of that work, I would still have an unsightly, uneven line in my casing. Not to mention that I had an almost new house that I just wasn’t in the mood to tear apart. What to do?

While I waited for divine inspiration to strike, I came up with a couple of temporary fixes. I started with a small stack of books which did not make it through Mira’s approval process, and then I moved on to a regular old brown doorstop, but lacking the mandatory pink color made that one a no go as well. One of my favorite solutions was to get someone to simply hold the door open. I chose one of our family friends that is always at the house without much to do (that one made me chuckle a bit).

Barbie did a great job of holding the door open.

Amazingly enough, Barbie did not get cleared either and was quickly given her walking papers. So the door swung shut, again and again. We lived with it, and lived with it, and kept living with it, and it just got more and more annoying.

One day when I was working with Dan, I mentioned the stupid door and the stupid carpenter and the stupid level that he didn’t bother to use. Dan casually said, “Just bend the hinge.”

My first thought was, “What?”

That was much too simple. I needed to get in there and take care of this professionally, and it didn’t include just bending the hardware. His plan was too pedestrian for me.

“No,” Dan said, “Just hit it with a hammer a couple of times. No one can tell and the door won’t swing shut.”

That’s all it takes. Instead of lubricating the hinges and making sure they swing easily, just do the opposite. Put a hinge, or in my case, two hinges in a slight bind, so there’s a touch of resistance.

I started by heading to the garage with the first hinge. I put it down on the concrete and gave it a whack on the barrel, but it didn’t make a difference. It didn’t bend and it didn’t bind. I hit it a little harder and still nothing. Then I really hit it. Finally, it started to offer some resistance, but not much. I ended up flattening the barrel down the entire length, but just a bit. I didn’t want it to look deformed, just a little out of round and not noticeable.

Hit along the barrel of the hinge until it binds, but still operates.

I reinstalled the the hinge, but it wasn’t enough. The door almost stayed open, but it still wanted to close. I took a second hinge out to the garage and treated it the same way, flattening the barrel just a touch down the entire length. That made all the difference.

Now the door looks good, stays open and works like any other regular door. And, the fix only took a few minutes (probably less time than it took to read this post). Thanks, Dan and Barbie, for all of your help.