Door rubbing on the floor or frame: 4 fixes from easiest to most serious

What you need

• Phillips or PZ2 screwdriver and a cordless driver
• Pencil and a wooden wedge or a book to prop the door
• Hand plane or electric planer (Bosch PHO, Einhell), or 60 grit paper on a sanding block
• 20 mm chisel and a hammer
• Jigsaw or circular saw with a guide for trims of more than 5 mm
• Spirit level
• 4x40 or 4x50 mm screws for the hinges
• Wooden matchsticks or a dowel and PVA glue to pack stripped screw holes
• Thin 10-12 mm washers or card packers for the hinges
• Replacement hinges of the same type (flush, butt or lift-off, from Leroy Merlin or the ferretería, the local hardware shop)
• Varnish, wax or paint to seal the planed edge

Step by step

1. 1

   Watch where it rubs

   Close the door slowly and look at the gap between the door and the frame. If it rubs at the bottom on the handle side and there is a gap at the top on the hinge side, the door has dropped (hinges). If it rubs evenly along the whole bottom edge, the floor has been raised or the door has swollen. If it rubs on the vertical edge on the handle side, the door has swollen or the frame has moved. Pencil the area that rubs.

2. 2

   Fix 1: tighten the hinge screws

   Open the door, prop it with a book under the free edge to take the weight off the hinges and tighten every hinge screw, on the door and on the frame. If any spins without biting, take it out, push two or three matchsticks with PVA glue into the hole, cut them flush, wait 30 minutes and screw it back in; or fit a longer screw (4x50). This sorts out one dropped door in three.

3. 3

   Fix 2: pack or replace the hinges

   If the door is still low on the handle side, the problem is play in the hinges. On lift-off hinges (the ones that separate when you lift the door), lift the door off and drop a thin steel washer onto the pin of each hinge: the door rises 1-2 mm. On butt or flush hinges, a packer of card or thin sheet metal between the top hinge and the frame tilts the door upwards. If the hinges have visible play or are rusty (common on the coast), replace them with three new ones of the same size.

4. 4

   Fix 3: plane the edge that rubs

   If the rubbing is due to swelling or a new floor (laminate, tiles laid over the old ones), timber has to come off. Measure how much it rubs: what is needed for the door to close with 3-5 mm of clearance over the floor. Take the door off by lifting it off its pins or unscrewing the hinges, stand it on edge on two trestles, pencil the line and plane from the ends towards the middle so you do not split the corners. Up to 3 mm is planed or sanded; more than 5 mm is cut with a saw and guide and finished with the plane.

5. 5

   Seal the edge

   A freshly planed edge absorbs moisture and swells again. Give the edge a coat of varnish, wax or the door's own paint before rehanging it. On white lacquered doors, two coats of water-based gloss.

6. 6

   Fix 4: when the frame has moved

   If the door is hung correctly and is not swollen but rubs in one corner of the frame, or the gap between door and frame is uneven all the way round, the frame has gone out of square (settlement, damp, a knock). It can be corrected slightly by moving the keep and chiselling the frame back where it rubs, but if it is twisted, the frame has to be released, packed level and refixed with foam and screws. That is a carpenter's job.

7. 7

   Check the latch and the keep

   With the door adjusted, check that the latch enters the keep without having to push. If it does not, loosen the keep, move it 1-2 mm in the direction needed and tighten; if it is a long way out, file the edge of the keep. A latch that catches makes the door seem to rub even when it does not.

Diagnosis: why the door rubs

Common mistakes when fixing a door that rubs

• Planing before checking the hinges. Timber comes off a door that only needed four screws tightened, and then there is a 1 cm gap at the bottom.
• Planing the hinge edge. Always the handle edge or the bottom. If you take timber off the hinge side, the hinge recesses have to be recut and it is far more work.
• Taking too much off at once. Plane 1 mm, hang, test and repeat. What you take off does not come back.
• Not sealing the edge. Bare timber absorbs moisture and rubs again the first winter.
• Packing the screw holes with filler. Filler does not hold a screw. Matchsticks with glue or a glued dowel.
• Forcing the door shut for months. It breaks the latch, the handle and, on front doors, the lock cylinder (bombín). If the front door rubs, also see lock jammed: the cylinder will not turn.

When to call a professional

Tightening screws and packing hinges is a five-minute job. Planing a door means taking it off, trestles, a plane and a steady hand to avoid splitting; a 30-40 kg white lacquered or solid timber door is easily spoiled. Resetting a frame is a carpenter's job. And if the door is the front door, armoured or external, the adjustment affects the lock and your security.

Manitas Costa prices: adjusting a door that rubs or will not close 40-70 euros (includes hinges tightened or packed, planing the edge and sealing), replacing hinges (3 pieces) 50-90 euros, planing and trimming several doors after a new floor by the hour, and hanging an internal door 90-150 euros. Fixed price by WhatsApp from a photo of the closed door showing where it rubs, 6 months written guarantee.

More in carpenter in Valencia, Alicante and the Costa Blanca and in what a carpenter charges to adjust a door. We work in Valencia, Alicante, Benidorm, Torrevieja, Elche and Dénia.

Damp, salt air and doors that rub on the coast

In beach properties that spend the winter shut up, the relative humidity indoors stays above 70 per cent for months. Internal doors of chipboard or unsealed timber absorb that moisture, swell 1-3 mm and rub in spring. As they dry out in summer they go back to normal, and so on every year. The permanent fix is to plane 2 mm and seal every edge (including the top one, which is almost never varnished), and to ventilate or run a dehumidifier in winter.

Salt air rusts ordinary steel hinges within a few years: play appears in the pin and the door drops. On the seafront, change to stainless steel or brass hinges, which cost 3-8 euros more each and never give trouble again.

If you have just laid laminate or engineered flooring and every door rubs, it is cheaper for us to plane them all in one visit than one at a time. And if the door giving trouble is a sliding wardrobe door, the problem is different: how to fix a sliding wardrobe door that comes off or will not slide.