Ask Rick- My Bathroom Door Squeaks

Adele,

 

WD40 is probably one of the greatest inventions known to man with the exception of duct tape. However, as good as it is, it can be overused.

I think that is what happened in your case. You probably could have gotten by with just a small amount or a few drops of oil on each hinge and then all you would have to do is move the door back and forth several times.

In most cases the reason the door wants to close by itself is because of the house shifting over time. The other problem could be that the door is out of square, the wall it was installed in was not leveled up properly or even the floor could be out of level.

 

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That being said, here are some suggestions on how to solve the problem.

The first thing that you will need to do is pull the hinge pins out of the hinges and take the door down. Leave each section of the hinges attached to the door. You will need to wipe off all of the WD40 from the hinge pins and use a household cleaner that has a degreaser to throughly clean the hinge pins.  Next take either a cotton swab or a thin stick or pencil with some cheesecloth wrapped around it and clean out all of the WD40 from inside the hinge pin openings. Clean them up as much as you can.  Now, put the door back on its hinges and see how the door responds. If it does not close on its own anymore, but still has a squeak, try to figure out which hinge the squeak is coming from and then put one drop of oil at the top of the hinge pin and then move the door back and forth several times until the squeak stops. You may have to add another drop or two until the squeak stops.

Now that you have solved the squeaking, what do you do if the door still wants to close on its own? Well, there is something you can try that may work.

Pull out the hinge pin from the center hinge, or if you only have two hinges on the door, pull out the bottom hinge. This next part will be a little tricky because you are going to need to bend the hinge pin slightly. If you have a vice, the put the hinge pin in the vice and let about half of it hang out. Make sure the vice is tight and then take a hammer and hit the end of the hinge pin either towards you or away from you, not up or down, until you see it start to bend. You don't want to bend it too much because you may not be able to get it to fit back into the hinge.

A second method would be to take a pair of vice grips and grip them tight onto the hinge and then twist them around the hinge pin which should put some score marks into the hinge pin. The score marks should cause the pin to have a couple of raised areas on it.

 

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So now in either case, put the pin back into the hinge and it should stiffen up the closing action of the door. You may need to put a couple of drops of oil in the hinges and again move the door back and forth to work it in.

Try these methods and it should help.

Rick Maselli
Founder of Showroom411.com