Doors
Door Repair
The slab is the part least likely to be at fault. In Montana the usual culprits are the ground underneath, the logs above, or the wind hitting it twice a week.
- Typical visit
- One to three hours
- Common fault
- A dropped slab
- Worst advice
- Plane the edge
- Estimate
- Free, fixed in writing
The drive is the job
Every door in the place, in one visit
A door that catches is a half-hour repair. Driving two hours to do a half-hour repair is not sensible for anybody, which is why we would rather you walked the whole property first.
Exterior doors, interior doors, the shop door, the one into the mudroom that has not latched since last spring. Most of them need the same things — longer hinge screws, a strike moved a few millimetres, a sweep replaced — and all of it comes off the same truck.
The exception worth flagging before we set off is log construction. If your doors are in log walls and several have started binding at once, that is likely settlement rather than hardware, and it changes what we bring and what we can promise.
On the truck
What rides on the truck for door work
Doors are mostly fixed with small, cheap parts. The trick is having all of them.
| What we carry | Why it is on board |
|---|---|
| Long hinge screws | Three inches and up, reaching past the jamb into framing. The single most useful item on this list and the fix for most dropped slabs. |
| Hinges and shims | In common sizes and finishes, for slabs where the hinge itself has worn rather than the screws letting go. |
| Strike plates and reinforced strikes | Repositioning a strike fixes most latching faults, and a reinforced one makes an exterior door meaningfully harder to force. |
| Sweeps and threshold sections | The highest-return item on a Montana exterior door, and the part that wears out fastest. |
| Weatherstrip, kerf-in and adhesive | Different frames take different sections. We carry a spread so the perimeter gets done properly rather than partly. |
| Timber, epoxy and filler | For jamb bottoms that have gone soft, so a small rot repair does not become a second trip. |
Make the trip count
Walk the property first
Five minutes, and it changes the economics of the visit completely.
Try every door and note where it rubs
Top corner means a dropped slab. Bottom edge means hinges or threshold. Latch side only means the strike has drifted. Each one is a different, quick fix.
Test the hinge screws on anything that sags
Open the door, take the weight, and try the top hinge screws. If they spin without biting, that is the fault found in ten seconds.
Paper test the exterior doors
Close each one on a strip of paper at several points. Where it pulls out freely you are heating the outdoors, and in this climate that is money.
Press the jamb bottoms
Both sides, and the threshold ends. Soft timber is the one item here getting worse on its own.
Include the outbuildings
Shop doors, barn doors and the garage. They take the worst weather and get the least attention, and they are already on the trip.
What Montana does to it
Five forces acting on a Montana door
Three of these are about the building rather than the door.
Log settlement
Log walls shrink and settle vertically for years after construction, and openings need slip space above the frame to allow for it. Where that space was never left or has been packed with trim and foam, the wall slowly comes down onto the door. Several doors binding at once in a log home is almost always this.
Frost heave
Montana frost goes deep and lifts steps, decks, porches and the frames sitting above them. A door that hung perfectly can start catching after one hard winter and partly recover by June, which is exactly why cutting anything is the wrong first move.
Wind load
An exterior door on open ground in Montana takes real pressure, repeatedly. A latch that only just engages will rattle in a gale, and a storm door caught by wind will tear its closer out of the frame.
Extreme cold on hardware
Lubricants thicken, metal contracts and marginal mechanisms stop working. A lock that was stiff in October will not throw cleanly at twenty below.
Snowmelt at the threshold
Snow piled against an entry for weeks melts in afternoon sun and refreezes overnight. Sweeps, thresholds and jamb bottoms take the worst of it and that is where most Montana exterior doors eventually fail.
By building
The buildings we work in
A door in each of these wants something quite different.
Log and timber homes
Log walls settle vertically for years after they go up, and the windows and doors in them need slip space above the frame to allow for it. Where that space was never left, or has been filled with trim and foam over the years, the opening slowly crushes the unit. A door that will not latch in a log home is often the building moving, not the hardware failing.
Ranch and outbuildings
Shops, barns, bunkhouses and equipment buildings with hardware that has to work in weather and gets no attention until it stops. Usually simple assemblies, usually repairable, and usually a long way from anybody who would come out for them.
In-town housing
Billings, Missoula, Butte, Helena and Great Falls hold a great deal of early-century stock — weight-and-pulley sash, putty glazing and original storm windows — plus post-war and modern suburbs where balances and sealed units fail together.
Manufactured homes
Common across rural Montana. Lightweight aluminium or vinyl frames, out-swing doors and sizes that match nothing in a store. We have a separate page for these because the parts and the advice are genuinely different.
Questions
Door repair questions
My door catches at the top corner.
Classic sign of a dropped slab or a frame that has moved. Hinge repair and realignment usually solve it without touching the door itself.
Should I plane the door down?
We would rather you did not. The door has not grown, and timber removed cannot be put back when the opening settles again in spring.
Several doors in our log home are binding.
That is settlement. Log walls move vertically for years and the openings need slip space above the frames. It is a building issue showing up at the doors, and we will explain what is actually needed.
Cold air comes in under the front door.
Sweep or threshold, and both are cheap. In a Montana winter it is the highest-return small repair there is.
The bottom of the frame is soft.
Snowmelt and salt sitting where they should have drained. Confined to the jamb bottom it is a cut-out and rebuild; once it reaches framing the job is larger.
Our storm door tore off in the wind.
Common here. We refit, replace closers and brackets, and where the frame has been damaged we repair that too — and we will tell you if the door was simply too light for your exposure.
Coverage
Door repair across Montana
A mobile service covering the whole state. Pick your town below, or call and we will plan a route to you.
Door Repair Across Montana
Related
Other repairs we handle
Windows and doors are the whole business, so whatever has failed, it is on this list — and it can go on the same visit.
Next step
Tell us where the door is catching
Free estimates across Montana, with every door on the property done in one visit.