The Door That Doesn't Click

by David Aston-Reese, January 23, 2007

Alright, how does the Intuitive Carpenter work? Let’s say that you are given the project of hanging a door in an existing doorway . . . replacing that gnarly wooded storm door that never closes. After sizing up the dimensions, you buy the door. My experience with hanging replacement doors is that they very rarely click on the first try. There is going to be a snag here and there. One of the snags is that sometimes there is a strangely annoying invisible force pushing back . . . the door resists latching. It’s that last inch or so before the “click.” Why is this? Is this the way it has to be? The Intuitive Carpenter goes to work and says, “Why is this so?” Or, more precisely, “Hmmm?” How do we solve this mysterious problem of the invisible force? As a rule, material used in a project has its own way of dictating how it will come together. So the Intuitive Carpenter will start to focus and pay close attention to the mumblings of the material.

THE HAMMER SOLUTION
The danger, of course, is attempting rash action. For example: “Hit it with a hammer!” This is the wrong path. I have taken this path . . . it only leads violently to more problems and obstacles. So, lets go back to the attentive Intuitive Carpenter, and observe the door in action.

THE MURMURINGS
Take in all the parts. Open and close the door slowly while listening for the murmurs. How are all the parts relating to each other? The hinges, the knob, the latch, the jambs . . . the jambs? Huh? How can that part of the doorway onto which the hinges and latch are attached have anything to do with this invisible, click-deterring force? There are two jambs to a doorway: the hinged side and the latch side, without which our door would be hanging in the air. Seems these jamb things are very important to our solution.

ALL JAMBED UP
Let’s take a closer look at the existing door jambs. Ah, yes! The two jamBs of our doorway must be on opposite, parallel planes . . . a perfect reflection of one another. But in our current jamb situation, the Intuitive Carpenter intuits that this is not the case. The hinge-side jamb must be twisted out a bit, and therefore the cause of the invisible, click-deterring force. Not enough for the naked eye to notice, but to the Intuitive Carpenter his inner eye is his guide. In order to correct the problem of the misaligned jambs, the point of attack are the hinges—not the jambs. Only the hinges can be finessed. Here are some tricks I’ve used: Instead of attaching the hinge plate snuggly onto the misaligned jamb, you take a toothpick or a thin dowel and put it where it would make the hinge plate parallel to the latch-side jamb. Or back out whichever hinge-plate screws on the hinge plate that would take the pressure off the hinge plate that is causing the invisible force that is preventing the door from effortlessly closing and then stuff something into that gap . . . breathe! This works better when you are in a hands-on and not in an in-head situation. And, of course, a dowel or toothpick might not stand the test of time. You might want to use something more brutal . . . perhaps a metal washer? Also be warned, that by adding this spacer you might have to shave the door width down a bit. So go and get that replacement door with confidence that you can master the invisible latch preventing force; and you too will feel the freedom of that satisfying “click!”

Next time, I will tell you how to finesse a door up and down without having to take it off the jamb . . . and how to tighten up those loose, annoying hinge plates.

David Aston-Reese (MA Thea., PSU) is currently an artistic director, along with his wife, Elli Michaels, of the Bird-On-A-Cliff Theater Company in Woodstock. As an apprentice in a summer stock theater company, he discovered his Intuitive Carpentry skills. www.bird-on-a-cliff.org