Exterior Door Repair

Because a door's seal is a system, and one part of it has quietly retired. An exterior door only stops air where compressible weatherstripping meets the slab evenly on all four sides — and that evenness depends on geometry upstream. The usual suspects, in order: the weatherstripping itself has flattened or torn (it's a wear item with a service life far shorter than the door's); the door sweep at the bottom has worn through or the threshold beneath it has settled; or the door has sagged on its hinges so it no longer lands square against the stops, compressing the seal hard on one corner and not at all on the opposite one. Cold snaps expose all three at once because winter air pressure differences drive infiltration hardest exactly when you notice it most. The repair sequence matters: we correct the geometry first — hinges, then threshold — and only then fit new seals, because fresh weatherstripping on a crooked door seals nothing. Done in order, it's a single visit and the draft is gone that evening.

It's the most common serious problem on this page — and one of the most repairable. The bottom twelve inches of an exterior door frame live in the wettest microclimate on your house: rain splashback off the stoop, snow piled against the jamb, and water wicking up the end grain of the frame legs. Rot starts inside the wood behind intact-looking paint, so by the time the surface bubbles or a thumb sinks in, the decay has a head start. The good news: rot at the frame base almost never involves the door itself, and it concentrates exactly where targeted repair shines. We cut the decayed sections back to sound wood, rebuild with structural epoxy or spliced matching lumber, correct the water path that caused it — usually flashing or a gap at the threshold joint — and refinish. The full craft has its own page at rotten door frame & sill repair. What decides "bad": catching it while the rot is in the frame legs keeps it a modest repair; ignoring it for years lets decay reach the sill and subfloor, where the same fungus costs multiples more.

We repair them, and usually it is — because storm doors rarely fail as a whole. They fail at four small points: the closer loses its damping and lets the door bang (or was never adjusted after installation); the hinge rail loosens where its screws strip out of the frame; the latch drifts out of alignment so the door won't stay shut in wind; and the sweep or glass/screen panels wear at their gaskets. Each is a parts-level fix costing far less than a decent new storm door installed. The honest exceptions: a frame bent by a wind-caught slam that racked the geometry, or corrosion through the hinge rail — those doors have structurally finished their careers, and we'll say so. One more thing worth knowing: a well-tuned storm door is quiet protection for the entry door behind it, adding an air gap and weather shield that measurably extends the main door's finish and seals. A banging one, by contrast, is slowly destroying itself and its frame. The difference is usually one closer adjustment we make in minutes as part of any exterior door visit.

French doors are the hardest sealing problem in residential doors — and still very much a repair, not a hopeless case. The difficulty is inherent: two independently moving leaves must meet each other in mid-air at the astragal and both land square against the frame, so every bit of sag, warp, or hinge wear shows up as a gap somewhere along that meeting line. The repair sequence is stricter than for single doors: true each leaf on its hinges first, then align the astragal and the surface bolts or multi-point hardware that pull the leaves into line, then rebuild any rot at the sill — French door sills fail early because two leaves mean twice the joint length collecting water — and only then fit weatherstripping along the frame and the meeting stile. Old French doors in Chatham and Westfield homes reward this work: they're usually solid wood with true divided lites, and once trued and sealed they close with the satisfying doubled thunk their builders intended. If the glass itself has failed — fogged insulated units in newer French doors — that's a companion fix on our patio door glass replacement page, done in the same visit.

Exterior door work spans the widest cost range on our doors menu, because the failures do: seal-and-sweep renewals sit at the bottom, hinge and threshold work in the middle, structural rot rebuilds at the top — and even the top lands around 80% less than the replacement project the same symptoms tend to trigger, which for entry systems starts at $10,000+ once frame, trim, and finishing are counted. Every estimate is written, itemized by failure, and free, with the replacement figure beside it for contrast. Speed runs on our standard clock: photos of the door, frame base, and threshold texted to (973) 564-0958 get an answer the same day; onsite assessment follows within 1–2 days; most repairs complete within 1–2 weeks, with seal-and-hardware visits usually done the day we arrive. Work is performed Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM by a fully insured crew and carries our 5-year workmanship warranty. Seasonal advice from experience: draft complaints peak in January, but October is when the same repairs happen most pleasantly — for you and for the caulk.