Why Are My Doors and Windows Sticking?

A door that suddenly will not latch, or a window that takes a shoulder to open, is annoying. It is also one of the most common early warning signs of a foundation problem, and it is easy to miss, because there are a few harmless reasons it can happen too.

When it is not the foundation

Wood swells with humidity. In a wet Georgia summer, a wooden door or window can tighten up in its frame and stick a little, then loosen back up when the air dries out. If it is mild, affects only a door or two, and comes and goes with the weather, that is usually just the wood breathing.

When it is the foundation

The kind of sticking to worry about is different. When a foundation settles unevenly, the walls above it shift out of square. A door frame that used to be a perfect rectangle racks slightly into a parallelogram, and the door no longer fits it. That is why foundation-related sticking usually comes with other clues:

• The gap along the top of the door looks uneven, wider at one corner
• Cracks running at an angle from the corner of the door or window
• The door drifts open or swings shut on its own because the frame is out of level
• More than one door or window affected, often on the same side of the house
• It keeps getting worse over time, instead of coming and going with the seasons

Why it happens here

Georgia's red clay swells and shrinks with the seasons, letting the footings under one part of the house settle more than another. As that corner drops, the framing above it moves, and the doors and windows in those walls bind. It is the same root cause as the cracks you might see in the brick outside.

What to do about it

If it is just humidity, a little planing or weatherstripping handles it. If it is the foundation, planing the door only hides the real problem while the house keeps moving. We find the cause of the settling and stabilize the foundation with steel piers, which stops the movement so the frames stop racking. Often the doors free up on their own once the house is back where it belongs.

If your sticking doors come with any of the other signs above, it is worth having looked at. See our foundation repair page for more.