Twisting or bowing and warping can be caused by uneven heating around the house – a very warm room on one side of a door with a cold hall on the other side, say – or by turning up heating in a new house before the building has had a chance to dry out slowly. To cure the problem, the door must be bent in the opposite direction.
If the swinging side of the door is warped, you could try forcing it back into shape and jamming it closed with wedges driven between the door and the frame. Leave the door closed for a few days. Otherwise you could clamp a stout piece of timber to either side of the door and insert packing pieces to reverse the distortion. Use G-clamps and take care to avoid damaging the door. It is a good idea to put timber packing under the G-clamps to prevent them indenting the door surface. The clamps and timber should be left in place for at least a couple of days.
If a door is bowed on the hinge side, it could be forced back into line and kept there by fitting an extra hinge in the middle of the side.
If the above methods are unsuccessful or impracticable – you should not try bending doors which have glass panels -you could try to reduce the effect of the distortion by one of the following two methods.
If the door frame has loose stops, these can be removed and replaced in a new position that allows the door to enter further into the frame, thereby concealing some of the distortion.
Warping can also be made less obvious by moving the hinge in the opposite corner to the twist. Do this by removing the screws in the hinge, plugging them with timber and rescrewing the hinge on further forward in the frame.
