Becoming Unhinged

Both of the front doors on my primary residence and rental property are 80” tall and over 20-years old. I have never needed to replace the hinges on either door or perform any major adjustments. On newer homes, the trend seems to be to have a front door which is over 90” tall. Don’t get me wrong, they looked great; but it is quite common to find that they have issues with the latch. From what I have observed, either the door was not properly installed or the hinges are wearing out.

If you are having issues with the latch of your door, examine the hinges first. There should be virtually no gap between the barrels. If you see a lot of black dust around the hinges and gaps between the hinge barrels, chances are that your hinges are worn. Though there can be other issues with the framing of a door; if the hinges are heavily worn, I start out by replacing them first.

When replacing hinges, if you are lucky, the manufacturer of your original hinges also manufacturers heavy duty hinges. These residential heavy duty hinges usually mean that they have ball bearings between the barrels. More importantly, if they also make a heavy duty hinge the height, width, screw placement, and radius will be the same. This saves a ton of time when performing a hinge swap. This means that one hinge can be swapped at a time, eliminating the need to remove the door.

What is an even more important step when changing hinges? Put the cordless drill/driver down and grab a screwdriver. I will sometimes use a drill/driver when removing screws, but I will almost never use one when Installing hinges. I will almost always use a screwdriver, especially when performing the final tightening of the screw. You might think that this wastes time, but I can’t tell you how many doors that I have come across with striped out screw holes. The few seconds in time saved by using a drill/driver will be wasted by the minutes needed to properly repair a striped out hole.