This summer our house settled which showed cracks in certain parts of the house. My problem right now is that I have 2 interior and one exterior door that catch when closing. You have to shove on them to close them. Do I have to plane the door opening, remove shims or reset the hinges? Any options that would avoid replacing the doors or having the house raised? Thank you all in advance.

 

When you push the doors shut, are the doors rubbing on the side of the jamb, on the top of the jamb, or both? And is this a new house? Sounds bad.

 

It does sound bad. Other questions. Are the doors in one section of the house, or scattered out? You may not be able to put a bandaid on heart surgery, you have to stop the bleeding. By correcting the sag you stop the bleeding. We'll wait for your reply.

 

Yeah, and its possible too that the cracks might have nothing to do with the doors- in other words, what you call "settling" might have nothing to do with the house sinking- it could be framing shrinking as it often does in a new home when the home was built with wet wood. Also, a lot of the time when doors are new, they'll sag a bit (esp. solid core doors) and they just need a little tweaking. But that depends a lot on how they were installed. The solution might be something as simple as putting in a long #10 x 3" screw through the top jamb hinge of the sagging doors to pull the door back in line. Heavy solid core doors usually need to be secured to the stud or they'll sag.

 

I have not punched a house yet where the door installers installed the proper screw in the top hinge. It is beyond me why they can't do what the maufacturer requires. Most quality doors leave the hinge screw out on purpose with a piece of tape over it and instructions to add the screw. But, noooooo!

 

LOL. You would have loved the seminar I attended once at a remodeller's convention in Las Vegas- it was for "production" trim carpenters- techniques that can speed up installation practices. The guy explained that this was the way it was done in thousands of homes in California, and that you had to work fast to make any money. While that might be true, the technique he used would only "look good" and it sure wouldn't be a quality job that would last very long.

He set interior prehung doors in the opening, tacked them to the hinge side trimmer with his finish gun, squared the door up, and nailed the casing on. No shims, no screws, no nothing. The door is just kind of suspended in mid-air and is only held by the casing, and whatever nails he popped into the jamb after the casing was on. While he was gloating about how time means money, I was thinking to myself, "how in the heck does he stay in business?"

I actually had a co-worker that I trained for a while that had that same mentality. He had worked out west and apparently that IS the way a lot of carpenters do things out there. They'd keep a LOT of punch-list guys busy the way it sounds.

 

the house is older (around since the 70's) the doors worked fine until last summers dry spell. most our neighbors have had the same problem with cracks and doors not fitting properyly anymore. the sticking of the doors is on the top/side like they need to be planed at the top. i didnt know if i should remove the doors and adjust the hinges or remove a shim or plane some. any suggestions

 

As already suggested, the solution might be something as simple as putting in a long #10 x 3" screw through the top jamb hinge of the sagging doors to pull the door back in line. Heavy solid core doors usually need to be secured to the stud or they'll sag. If the door is rubbing on top, you'd put the long screw in the bottom hinge.

If that doesn't help, you could lightly sand the areas of the door that hit on the jamb. A belt sander with 120 grit would work best, just be very careful not to sand off too much, belt sanders can be quite aggressive if left in one spot- you have to keep them moving.

 

I had this problem, solved it with the belt sander. Didn't take much.