The door that sticks in monsoon, and why you should not plane it
Wood swells when the air is wet and shrinks when it dries. Plane a sticking door in August and you have bought yourself a draught in January.
Every year, in the wet weeks, the same door in the same house stops closing properly. It catches at the top corner, or it needs a shove, or the lock no longer lines up with its plate.
Every year somebody takes a plane to it.
Why that is the wrong move
Wood takes up moisture from the air and gives it back. In monsoon it swells. In January, when the air is dry and everything is running heaters, it shrinks back — and a door that was planed to fit at its very fattest is now a door with a gap around it.
You will feel that gap. It is the draught you cannot find the source of, and it is permanent, because you cannot put wood back.
Wait. A door that sticks for three weeks a year and works for the other forty-nine is a door doing what wood does.
When it is not the weather
There are sticking doors that have nothing to do with damp, and these are worth fixing properly:
- It sticks all year round, not just when it is wet.
- The gap around the door is uneven — tight at the top on the hinge side, wide at the bottom on the other. That is a door that has dropped.
- The screws in the top hinge turn and turn and never tighten.
- It swings shut or swings open on its own when you leave it half open.
- The lock has stopped lining up and you are lifting the handle to get it to catch.
Nearly all of those are hinges, not width. A door hangs from three screws at the top and its whole weight pulls on them. When those let go, the door drops at the outer edge and starts to bind — and taking wood off the side makes the underlying problem worse while hiding it for a season.
The five-minute check you can do now
Open the door halfway and lift it gently by the handle. If it moves — if there is play, if it clunks — the hinges are loose or worn, and that is your answer.
Then look at the top hinge screws. If one spins without biting, the hole has gone. A longer screw that reaches into the frame behind, rather than just the lining, often fixes the whole thing.
The lock is usually the frame, not the lock
A door that locked fine last year and does not now has usually not developed a broken lock. The door has moved, so the bolt no longer meets the hole cut for it. The fix is the strike plate on the frame, not a new lock — and anybody who reaches for a new lock before checking the alignment is selling you a part you did not need.