Door Repair in South Florida

A door tells you what is wrong with it before anyone picks up a tool. Look at which edge is polished, and whether the gap around the closed slab stays even or wedges shut toward one corner. A sticking door in Broward or Miami-Dade usually traces back to a hinge or a strike plate, not to the slab itself. That distinction matters, because taking material off a slab is permanent, while a loose hinge screw or a misplaced strike can be put back the way it was.

Diagnose before you plane

Close the door and read the gap. A healthy reveal is about the thickness of a nickel and runs the same all the way around. If it pinches at the top of the latch side and opens up at the bottom of the hinge side, the slab has dropped and rotated. That is a hinge problem, and planing the corner only hides it until the hinge moves again.

The reason it happens so often is how jambs are built. Hinge screws often bite only the jamb board, with air or a shim behind it, and the top hinge carries most of the weight. Years of the door being pushed shut work those screws loose and the jamb bows toward the slab. A screw long enough to reach the framing behind the jamb pulls everything back and often fixes the rub outright. A chewed-out hole gets plugged with glued wood and redrilled rather than packed with something that will spin again.

The opposite problem is a hinge mortised too deep, which pushes the slab toward the latch side. A thin shim behind that leaf moves it back a hair. Adjustments like this are measured in fractions of an inch, which is exactly why they beat reaching for a plane.

Latching is an alignment problem

A door that latches only when you throw it is not a broken lockset. The bolt is striking the face of the strike plate and skidding over it instead of dropping into the pocket. We coat the bolt with a marker, close the door, and read the print. High, low, or short each points to a different fix: raise or lower the plate, file the opening, shim it out, or deepen the mortise behind it so the bolt has somewhere to go.

Weatherstripping complicates it. Fresh seal on a patio door pushes back, so a bolt that was already marginal now needs a shove. Getting the strike right first, then fitting seal that compresses instead of blocking, is what lets a heavy door close with one hand.

Sliding doors and the grit that kills them

Sliders here live a harder life than anywhere inland. Salt-carrying air, sand tracked in from pavers and screened patios, and the dust that blows through during storm season all settle into the bottom track. The rollers under the panel are small wheels riding a thin metal rail, and that grit turns into grinding compound. The wheels flatten or seize and start skidding, and the aluminum rail gets pitted so the wheels fall into the low spots and have to be dragged out of them.

The repair is mechanical, not cosmetic. The panel is lifted up into the head track and brought out, the track gets scraped and vacuumed to bare metal, and rollers go back in as a pair so the panel rides level. The height screws at each end are then set so the panel hangs parallel to the jamb. Where the rail is chewed up, a stainless cap over the damaged run gives new wheels a flat surface without touching the frame.

Keeping it that way is simple. Vacuum the track a few times a year and use a dry silicone or PTFE lubricant, never grease, which collects sand.

Interior doors, humidity, and hollow cores

Summer really does swell doors, and solid wood moves the most. When a cut is genuinely needed, it comes off the hinge side or the bottom where possible, and the raw edge gets sealed before the door is rehung. A cut left bare tends to bind again the following summer.

Hollow-core doors set their own limit. Only the perimeter is solid, usually an inch or so, so cutting past that opens the honeycomb inside and the door loses its edge. We measure the solid frame first, and if there is not enough to work with, we say so instead of ruining the slab.

Bifolds fail in predictable places: the bottom pivot bracket creeps along its track, the top pivot drops out of its socket, and the guide on the trailing panel wears round. All three are replaceable, and squaring the track keeps them from repeating.

Where door work stops being minor

There is a line between tuning a door and replacing one, and it is worth naming before a quote goes out, not halfway through. Hanging a new exterior door or cutting a fresh opening changes an exit route and changes how the frame is anchored against wind, and neither is a small job dressed up as one. Work that requires a Florida contractor’s license is referred to licensed pros. You get that in writing at the quote stage, with what kind of pro to call, not after a jamb is already open.

What helps before we quote

Send a short video of the door closing slowly with the sound on, since a rub and a scrape sound different. Add photos of the gap along the latch side, the strike plate, and the hinges. For a slider, photograph the bottom track along its length. Tell us if you are in a condo so we can plan around approved work hours, elevator rules, and carrying glass through a shared hallway. Clear the swing path, and let us know about pets, because the door will be open or off its hinges for part of the visit.