LESLIE: Rob in Alaska is dealing with a door that swells in the winter, which means you probably are dealing with a swollen door quite often. Tell us what’s going on.
ROB: Well, it’s actually – the door opens and closes fine but when I try to turn the bolt into the frame, I guess, it doesn’t go.
TOM: Right.
ROB: And last year, I had the same problem and I took the thing apart and chipped out – tried to basically move the hole up a little bit.
TOM: Right.
ROB: And then, again this year, it’s doing it again. So, I’m stuck.
TOM: Well, I suspect that you didn’t get it exactly in the right place so let me give you a trick of the trade, OK? I want you to take off the metal plate for the door – for the striker. This is the bolt, right? So take off that metal plate, alright?
And then open the door and on the end of the bolt itself – you can do this with a wax crayon or with a lead pencil; real soft, lead pencil; I do it with a carpenter’s pencil – I color the back end of that bolt – just the very end – so it’s really full with just a lot, a lot of lead. You can also do it with chalk. Close the door and then snap that bolt closed a bunch of times. Just snap it; one after another after another.
And what you’re doing is you’re transferring that lead to the door jamb. And then when you open the door, you’ll know exactly where that bolt is hitting and you’ll be able to put the striker plate back. You can carve it, make it a little bit bigger, chisel it out – whatever you’ve got to do – and it’ll close right every single time.
ROB: Excellent. That’s excellent. I would never have thought of that by myself. Thank you.
TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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