Interior Door Adjustment & Planing
Interior door adjustment and planing is a five-step diagnostic fix for sticking, dragging, and non-latching interior doors — hinge screw repair, hinge shimming, strike plate realignment, threshold clearance check, and bottom-edge planing only as a last step — starting at $150 for a single-door hinge re-set. The bedroom door that scrapes a quarter-inch arc into the carpet, the bathroom door that needs a hip-check to close, the office door that swings open by itself at three in the morning because the frame is no longer plumb. Sticking and dragging interior doors are almost never warped — they are stripped hinge screws, racked hinges, drifted strike plates, or a new floor that raised the threshold a half inch. Handis diagnoses the cause before any material comes off the door, because a hollow-core door planed by mistake is a door that has to be replaced. Most fixes finish in 30 to 60 minutes per door.
Service
How Interior Door Adjustment & Planing Works
Five sequential steps from the hinge-screw check to the final paint-sealed bottom edge — the diagnostic order we follow on every sticking interior door so material only comes off when nothing else fixes it.
Hinge Screw Diagnosis
Pull every hinge screw, check for thread bite, and re-set with one of three fixes — hardwood toothpicks-and-glue plugs for shallow strips, an oak dowel for deeper wallow, or a 3-inch
Hinge Shim & Alignment
A racked door (high at the latch top, low at the latch bottom) gets a manufactured plastic shim or a hand-cut cardboard shim slipped behind the appropriate hinge leaf. The door lifts back into its original plane without any material loss.
Strike Plate Realignment
A door that closes but does not latch is a strike-plate problem, not a door problem. We mortise the strike upward, downward, or sideways, file the strike hole on misses under 1/16 inch, or remortise entirely on drift over 3/16 inch.
New-Flooring Threshold Clearance
Measure the actual clearance over the new hardwood, LVP, or tile (5/8 inch is the target — clears the rug, the door sweep, and any high spot in the floor). Planing is sized to that target, not by eye.
Bottom-Edge Planing & Refinish
Door comes off the hinges across two sawhorses, pencil reference line scribed, bottom edge planed with a sharp low-angle block plane from the long-grain ends toward the middle to prevent end-grain blowout. Edge sanded smooth, primed with shellac primer, color-matched with one coat of paint before the door goes back on the hinges.
Interior Door Adjustment & Planing Pricing
Final pricing depends on the diagnosis result, whether material has to come off the door, and how many doors fit into a single visit. Request a free estimate for an accurate quote.
Tell us which doors stick — bedroom, bath, closet — and we will quote the visit.
Why Handis for Interior Door Planing
The most expensive door-repair mistake we redo is a hollow-core door planed an inch off the bottom by a previous tech who skipped the hinge-screw check. The cardboard honeycomb core ends up exposed; the bottom edge cannot hold paint or weatherstrip; the door has to be replaced. We have walked into dozens of houses where the original problem was a single stripped top-hinge screw — a $2 fix — and the door is now scrap. Diagnosis is not optional. It is the difference between a 30-minute visit and a new door.
Estimate
Tell us which doors stick, what they are doing (drags, will not latch, swings open on its own), and whether new flooring went in recently. We will quote the visit.
Customer Reviews
Interior door adjustment and planing reviews from real Handis customers.
Bedroom door had been scraping the carpet since spring. Tech walked in, pulled the top hinge screw, showed me it was stripped clean — no thread bite. Plugged the hole with a toothpick bundle and glue, re-set the screw with a 3-inch one that grabbed the stud behind the jamb. Door swings true. Took twenty minutes. No planing.
New LVP flooring through the whole upstairs, four doors dragging hard. The tech measured the clearance over the new floor for each one, took two off the hinges, and planed exactly enough — the other two only needed strike plate realignment. He sealed the planed edges with primer and matched the paint. Doors swing like they were built for the new floor.
Bathroom door I had been shouldering closed for two years. Tech showed me the strike plate was off by an eighth — frame had settled. He remortised the strike upward, filed the strike hole a hair, and the latch fell into the strike under its own weight. Two-year problem, fifteen-minute fix.
Office door swinging open on its own at night. The tech leveled the door in the frame, found it was tipping toward the latch side because of a racked top hinge. Slipped a manufactured plastic shim behind the top hinge leaf and the door now stays exactly where I leave it. Did not understand the diagnosis going in. Understand it now.
Whole-home check, eight interior doors. Three needed hinge re-sets, two needed strike realignment, one needed a 3/8-inch plane after the master bath was retiled. Tech worked the whole house in about two and a half hours, sealed every planed edge, painted matched. He flagged a fourth door that would need attention next year — appreciated the upfront warning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about interior door adjustment and planing.