Old timer showed me a trick with a hand plane on a sticky door

I was fighting with an interior door that kept sticking at the top last week. A guy named Pete who's been framing since the 80s walked over and grabbed my block plane. He took off maybe 1/64th of an inch from the hinge side, not the top like I was about to do. Said most people plane the wrong spot and it just makes the gap worse. Any of you ever had a door that was tricky to figure out which side to trim?

3 comments

3 Comments

finleycooper2mo ago

Pete's right about planing the hinge side. That's where the issue usually is on older doors that have settled. If you take off the top you're just fighting the sag and making the gap look worse. Takes a steady hand though, easy to take too much off.

eva_thompson102mo agoMost Upvoted

Yeah I've done this on a few old victorian doors and the trick is to mark the binding spot with chalk before you take the hinges off. Did you find the hinge screws were stripped at all or was it just the wood giving way?

uma_webb281mo agoTop Commenter

And honestly, marking the binding spot with chalk is the kind of simple thing you only learn after messing it up the first time lol. I've found the screws are usually fine on the old ones but the wood around them gets soft and crumbly from years of moisture and paint buildup. Sometimes you can get away with just filling the holes with dowels and wood glue and reusing the same screws, but on really bad ones I've had to drill out new pilot holes and use longer screws to hit fresh wood deeper in the frame. That extra step makes a huge difference though, the door sits way tighter and doesn't start binding again after a few months.