Easy Door Fix With Stripped Screws and Hanging Hinges

Okay, time for fix it Friday. And time to fix door hinges with stripped screws.

Do you have any doors that currently have hinges that look like this?

I have an effervescent four year old that among other delightful pastimes likes to hang on doorknobs and swing back and forth (one of the reasons why I built this swing). And I mean delightful for him, not for me. Between taking all the doors off when we moved in to repaint and his swinging a lot of the hinges are not holding. As a result the doors hang, don’t close, and sometimes even chip on the frame. Screwing again and again won’t work of course because they are stripped.

A couple fixes that were not options for me: First, unless your home is older or you have a very high-end home most of our doors are hallow in the middle, so replacing shorter screws with longer ones won’t fix the problem. Next, replacing doors… ya, not even a consideration.

Materials needed:

toothpicks (raw wood ones, not plastic or coated)
wood glue
screwdriver or drill
clamp (if door is cracked)

Follow these steps to happier hinges:

1. Remove the screws. Keep track of the screws so you don’t loose them! Normally I won’t take the door off and I repair one hinge at a time. For this door, my son cracked it vertically, so I removed the door, put wood glue in the door and applied a clamp.

Note: clean up wood glue drips before it dries! Removing dried wood glue is a total pain.

2. Roll the toothpick in wood glue and push into the screw hole. You may need to use several toothpicks, you want a snug fit. When you replace the screws the toothpick wood is going to allow the screws to grasp and hold tight, which is what we’re going for here.

3. Allow the wood glue to dry (see directions on bottle). I let mine set overnight.