Door and frame assemblies
Repair of architectural wood and flush commercial doors in Charlotte — swollen and delaminating bottom rails, stripped hinge screws, lifted edge banding, and rated wood leaves where the core carries the rating. Call (333) 333-3333.
At a glance
Compare this against the other three leaf assemblies or read the standards reference.
Door and frame assemblies
A commercial wood flush leaf is a core with two faces glued to it and banding on four edges, and every one of its failure modes traces back to something getting past that banding. Water at the bottom is the classic: the banding at the bottom rail is the thinnest defence on the whole leaf, it gets mopped against daily in a corridor and constantly in a washroom, and once moisture is into the core the leaf grows. A swollen leaf binds, and a binding leaf gets its hinges over-torqued by a closer, and over-torqued hinges strip out of a particleboard core. That is one failure presenting as three, six months apart.
The practical consequence is that the useful question on a wood door is not what is wrong with it now but where the water came from. Fixing a bottom rail in a building where the floor gets wet-mopped twice a day buys you a year.
Detail
We should be clear about the exclusion first, because it is the one people assume: this is repair of the assembly, not finishing work. We are not a refinishing or staining service and we do not do custom millwork. What we do is make the leaf function and last.
Cutting back to sound material, replacing the banding, and sealing the edge properly. On a rated leaf this is tightly constrained by what the listing permits, and on some rated wood doors a field repair to the bottom rail is not allowed at all.
The usual failure on a leaf that has a closer on it. Proper repair means reinstating material the screw can actually hold, not a longer screw into the same hole. Leaves with a closer often want a third hinge or a heavier hinge line, and doing that without addressing why the screws stripped just moves the failure.
Cosmetic until it is not. Exposed core on a vertical edge takes on moisture and the leaf starts growing. It is a small fix early and an expensive one late.
Wood rated assemblies commonly go to 90 minutes and the rating is carried by the core, which is why a field cut past the permitted undercut voids it. NFPA 80 allows a maximum 3/4 in undercut, and 3/8 in where the bottom of the door is more than 38 in above the finished floor. Before anybody takes a saw to a rated wood leaf, the manufacturer gets asked.
| Variable | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Whether the leaf is rated | A label restricts the repair to what the listing permits and sometimes rules out a field repair entirely. |
| How far the moisture has travelled | A bottom rail is a repair. A core that has drunk halfway up the leaf is a replacement. |
| Whether the source of the water is fixable | A repair in a room that will wet the door again is a repair with an expiry date, and we will say so. |
| Whether the hinge line needs reinstating | Reinstating material a screw can hold is a different job from replacing a hinge. |
No figures appear in that table and none appear anywhere on this site, because a price quoted before anybody has seen the opening is a number somebody ends up unhappy about. Those are the variables that decide it.
Why us
Because the answer decides whether the repair is worth doing at all.
A longer screw into a failed hole is a repair that lasts until the next busy week.
The core carries the rating. Guessing at what a listing permits is not a risk worth taking on somebody else's building.
Process
Hinge edge of the leaf and the frame rabbet. It changes everything downstream.
Mopping, a washroom, a leaking threshold, a roof. Somewhere.
Guessing at the boundary means doing it twice.
All four edges, not just the one that failed.
A closer on a leaf whose screws stripped once will strip them again if the hinge line is not right.
Head, both jambs, meeting edges and undercut against the NFPA 80 limits.
Usually the same thing, unless the water gets dealt with.
Tell us whether there is a label on the hinge edge and whether the floor near it gets wet.
