Why Do My Doors and Windows Stick in Las Vegas?
A twenty minute fix, or a symptom worth investigating. How to tell.
A door that has started catching on its jamb is one of those problems that is either trivial or informative, with very little in between. Most of the time it is a loose hinge screw and ten minutes of work. Occasionally it is the clearest early signal a house gives that something underneath it has moved.
Telling them apart takes about five minutes and no tools, and it is worth doing before you plane anything off a door, because planing a door to fit a moving frame means planing it again next year.
Work through these in order before anyone touches the door
Count the doors
One sticking door in a house is a door problem. Three or four sticking doors that all appeared over the same season, particularly on the same side of the house, is a house problem. This single question sorts most cases.
Check the hinges first
Open the door and pull up on the handle. If there is play, the top hinge screws have worked loose into the jamb, which is by far the most common cause. Longer screws that reach the framing behind the jamb fix it permanently.
Find where it binds
Slide a piece of paper around the closed door and see where it stops. Binding at the top of the latch side usually means hinges. Binding along the whole latch side, or a visibly out of square gap, suggests the frame itself has racked.
Look at the frame, not the door
Stand back and look at the gap around the closed door. It should be even. A gap that tapers, wide at the top and tight at the bottom or the reverse, means the opening is no longer square.
Look for company
Check the wall above the door for cracks, and check whether the floor tile or grout nearby has cracked. Symptoms that cluster in one part of a house point somewhere. Symptoms scattered randomly usually do not.
What causes it here specifically
Seasonal movement. Indoor humidity in this valley runs from single digits in June to something far wetter in monsoon season. Wood doors and jambs take on and give up moisture with that, and a door fitted in February can bind in August. If it frees up again on its own, that is what it was.
Hinge fatigue. Builder-grade hinges fastened with short screws into a jamb rather than into framing will sag under a solid-core door within a few years. Extremely common on boom-era houses and cheap to correct.
Foundation movement. The valley’s caliche and expansive clay, covered in our post on what caliche means for building here, can move a slab enough to rack a door frame out of square. This is the case where the gap tapers and other symptoms cluster nearby.
Water damage. A jamb that has been wet, from an exterior door with failed weatherstripping or a bathroom door next to a leak, will swell and stay swollen. Look for a stained or soft spot low on the jamb.
What we would actually do
If it is hinges, we replace the screws with longer ones that bite into the framing and re-hang the door properly. That is usually the whole job.
If the frame has racked and the movement has stopped, the door gets re-hung to the opening as it now is, and the trim adjusted so it looks deliberate rather than fudged. Planing the door is a last resort and never the first move. Where several doors have gone at once it is usually worth handling them together, which is the kind of small carpentry we fold into general contracting work or a repaint.
If the movement has not stopped, fixing the door is pointless until you know why. That is the case where we would tell you to get a structural opinion before spending money on carpentry. Doors are cheap to fix later and the diagnosis does not get easier by waiting.
Sticking doors and windows
Why do my doors only stick in summer?
Almost certainly seasonal. Framing and wood doors move with humidity, and the swing here between June and monsoon season is large. If it frees itself when the weather turns, leave it alone.
Can I just plane the door?
You can, and it often works. The risk is that if the frame is moving seasonally you have now made the door too small for winter, and if the frame is moving permanently you will be planing it again. Diagnose first, plane second.
My sliding patio door is getting harder to move. Same cause?
Usually not. Sliders are far more often dirty or worn rollers and a track full of grit, which is a common outcome in a dusty valley. Clean the track and look at the rollers before assuming anything structural.
Several doors started sticking at once. How worried should I be?
Worth investigating rather than worth panicking. Note when it started, check for cracks nearby, and mark any crack ends with a dated pencil line. If it correlates with a season it is likely humidity. If it appeared and stayed, get an opinion.
Do windows stick for the same reasons?
Partly. Vinyl windows, which is most of the valley, are less affected by humidity than wood but just as affected by a frame going out of square. They also suffer from tracks full of dust and from balance hardware wearing out.
Want someone to look at it?
Describe what you are seeing, or send a photograph. We will tell you whether it is cosmetic or structural, and we will say so plainly when the answer is that you need a different trade.
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