Problem with exterior door

Hi. I have this exterior door in my dining room. I see daylight at the bottom side the door but not at the top. Upon closer inspection, it turned out the weather strippings had been installed quite badly by the guy who did it so I went out to buy some replacement parts and I installed them properly.

The thing is, I still see daylight at the bottom, and not at the top even though the weather stripping are spot on and brand new, so I guess they weren't the only problem. While scratching my head, I have noticed that the gap at the top (GAP A) is smaller than the gap at the bottom (GAP B). Plus, when I look at the door with my eyes parallel with the wall, it seems that the top of the door is well recessed but that the bottom protrudes slightly towards inside of the room.
Is there anything I can do to fix this? Plus, the handle and lock parts that latch the door closed seem to barely make it inside their receptacle (they do, but in a edge of teeth manner). I have included a picture of the type of hinges if it can be of any help.

 

What happens if you tighten the screws in the top hinge?

 

The problem is that the door is installed out of plumb, which probably means that the wall is not perfectly plumb... it leans in or out more on one side of the door than it does on the other. You cant just slap a door in flush with the wall and assume that the wall is plumb. Thats probably what happened here. Both side jambs on a door need to be plumb... or if its not possible to make them plumb, they should at least be in the same plane (i.e. out of plumb by the same amount so that the jambs are not racked, with one being plumb while the other is not). When a door is not installed in this manner, that's what it will look like.

To correct this, the door would probably need to be take out and be reset. At a minimum, it would need to have all the fasteners that are holding it removed, and then it could be jockey around so that it closes correctly and evenly on the weatherstrip. Both top and bottom should look exactly like the top does in your picture. This would be accomplished by bumping the bottom right corner and the top left corner of the door in (toward the inside) about 1/16 (or 1/8", depending)... and bumping the bottom left corner and the top right corner of the door out (toward the outside) about 1/16" (or 1/8", depending). You can make all of the adjustment on only ONE corner, but you would need to move it a large amount, so it is usually better to adjust each corner of the door a small amount. It doesn't take much and it won't throw the interior and exterior trim off too much if you just tweak each corner a small amount.

Tightening screws or putting longer screws in the hinges will not solve this problem.

It's also possible that the door itself has warped... you do see that more often on full view doors than on those that have less glass. So you would need a 78" level to figure out where the problem lies. A wall that is out of plumb... or a door that has warped.

If the gap at the latch is too wide, that's also an installation problem, where the latch side jamb is bowed out. The long screws for the deadbolt will suck the door over too far if the installer did not shim the door correctly and verify that the jamb is straight with a 78" level.

 

I thought this might be a small problem but X thinks otherwise - go with what he says.

 

These are real bad news for me because this exceeds the competence of the very humble apprentice week-end handyman that I am (lol). I guess it will be better to have the job done by a pro and learn from that. I will check first wether the door has warped, of course. Thanks so much for the diagnosis. I appreciate it.

 

That was the problem my sister had. House was built in 2006 and then repossessed a few years later. It had been vacant a couple of years when my sister bought it as a fixer. Before moving in I was over there and noticed the HUGE gap at the top of the door and found I could push that corner in but it came right back out.

In her case the jamb was fine, it was the door itself and once replaced it was fine.