Jamb and Frame Repair in Houston

Most people call about the door. Nine times out of ten the door is fine and the frame around it is the problem: it has rotted at the bottom, split at the latch, or been pushed out of square.

Houston makes the third one common in a way it is not elsewhere. The clay soil under these houses swells when it rains and shrinks when it does not, the slab moves with it, and door frames are rigid rectangles sitting in walls that are no longer quite rectangular. The door starts catching on the top corner, then stops latching, and eventually you are lifting the handle to close it.

The other two are water and force. Rain sits at the base of the jamb where it meets the threshold and rots it from the bottom up, usually invisibly until the wood gives under a thumb. And a forced entry almost never breaks the door — it splits the jamb where the strike plate is screwed in, because that is three-quarters of an inch of soft pine holding the whole lock.

We repair rather than replace wherever the frame allows it. Rotten sections get cut out and pieced in with new timber, split jambs get glued, clamped and reinforced, and misaligned strikes get repositioned so the door closes without being shoved. Then the repair is sanded and finished so it disappears into the rest of the frame.

Replacing a frame is a much bigger job than people expect. The casing comes off, the trim rarely survives, and on an older house the new frame almost never matches what is around it. That is worth avoiding when a repair will hold, and most will — the damage is usually confined to the bottom eight inches of one leg.

What we will not do is fill and paint over soft wood. Filler in a jamb has nothing to grip, it moves at a different rate to the timber around it, and within a year or two the crack reappears exactly where it was. If the wood is gone it gets cut out, not covered.

We are straight about the cases where replacement is the honest answer: a frame that has rotted through at the hinge side, one that has been patched badly several times already, or an opening that has moved so far out of square that no amount of adjustment will make the door sit right. In those we say so before quoting a repair that would not last.

Rot cut out and rebuilt New timber pieced into the jamb, not filler smeared over soft wood.
Split jambs reinforced Repaired and backed properly, so the lock has something solid to hold.
Doors that stick, fixed Usually the frame moved with the slab. We re-square the opening instead of planing the door.
Finished to match The repaired section is sanded and finished so you cannot see where it was.

If your door only sticks in summer and frees up in winter, that is moisture and movement, not a hinge problem. Planing the door is the usual mistake — come January you have a gap.

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