Hello and thanks for reading (hopefully responding) to this post. We have a french doors leading to a patio door that consists of three panels. The middle panel opens up to the deck and the end two panels are stationary. The middle door is sagging and no longer square. It still works however the gap along the top of the door is growing and cold air rushes in during the winter. It would be easy to simply install turnbuckles on opposite corners to square it up however with a glass door in the living room this would not look so great.

My question to the forum is has anyone run across this issue before? If so, did the door need to be replaced or can a carpenter re-square the door and strenghten it?

P.S. The door is no longer covered by the warranty (Marvin).

Thanks!

 

Welcome to the forums! Look at the top hinge on the door. There may be an intentionally left open, screw hole. If not, take out an inside screw, and replace it with a 3" screw, tightening it well. That should take the sag out. Let us know how it goes.

 

Have you checked to make sure the hinge screws are all tight?

If the jamb is loose you may be able to screw or nail it back in place.

 

Since you mentioned that this is a 3 panel unit, putting long screws through the hinge will not work in this situation. The door is out of square, so like you mentioned, you would have to resquare the door to restore the door to it's original working condition. Not the door itself... but the entire 3 door unit is what would need to be squared up.

The first thing to do would be to try to figure out what has changed to make the door out of square. Are the sides still plumb? If so, then the door has likely been installed on top of a surface that is not level. Go outside and eyeball all the way across the top of the 3 door unit. You might see some sag in it. If so, that would need to be corrected.

In any case, to correct a sagging door on a unit with sidelights, usually all you need to do is stick a prybar underneath the entire unit and stick some tapered shims under the hinge side of the door that is sagging. What this will do is raise the latch side of the jamb.

The door likely has a nailing fin, and in order to make this adjustment and move the door at all, you would likely need to remove the exterior trim, along with some of the nails / screws that are above the door. Good luck, let us know how it turns out.

 

This is kind of tough to explain. The door is all glass surrounded by a wood frame. The door hinges are on the right side and they are square. The actual joints in the door itself are failing so they are no longer square. The vertical sides of the door are plumb however the horizontal parts of the door sag.

 

Aha. I understand now. And the door is no longer covered by warranty??? Must be old. What you would need to do is remove the glass panel, square the door, then reglaze the glass, ensuring that there are rubber setting blocks spaced around the perimeter of the glass to keep the door frame lined up square around the glass.

Has the glass ever been replaced?

 

The home was built in 1992 and from I've been able to research the warranty was good for 10 years. It's good to hear though that the door may be able to be fixed without replacing the whole unit.

I was also thinking that since the door to the left of center is identical to the center door that with some modifications (lockset holes) the two could probably be swapped if needed.

 

I'm not 100% familiar with Marvin's but most doors have a way to get the glass out. I've got some Marvin windows in my kitchen, and they have a glazing strip on the outside perimeter of the glass. I doubt that with a door that new there would be an interior stop. The exterior glazing strip gets removed (it snaps into a kerf, so you just have to tap it back out) and then you need to deglaze the glass. Glaziers have a special knife to do this- it's amost like a pizza cutter, and you use it to cut the tape or sticky stuff that is holding the glass in.

If you think this is too much to handle, call a glass shop, tell them you need a sagging door repaired (and that you don't need new glass- just reglazing), and see what they would charge to have a look at it.