French and patio doors carry their full weight on a small number of hinges, and over time that weight pulls the hinges out of true. The door starts dropping slightly on its latch side, which is why it drags and will not close square anymore.
Service re-sets and, where needed, replaces the hinges, then checks the strike plate alignment so the door latches without you having to lift or shoulder it shut. On double French doors we also check the astragal and the flush bolts on the inactive panel, since those are the parts that get skipped in a quick fix.
What's Included
French Door Repair
Exterior French doors work hard in South Florida — full sun, humidity, and wind-driven rain on a pair of tall, heavy panels. When a set stops closing or locking the way it should, the cause is usually one of the failures below, and most of them are repairable without replacing the doors.
Each panel hangs its full weight on its hinges, and over time the screws and hinge leaves give slightly. The panel drops on the latch side, the gap around it goes uneven, and the door starts rubbing at the top corner or dragging on the threshold. We re-set or replace the hinges, square the panel in the frame, and re-align the strike plate so the door closes square and latches without being lifted or forced.
On double doors, the inactive panel is held top and bottom by flush bolts, and the astragal covers the gap where the two panels meet. When flush bolts corrode or slip out of alignment, that panel moves when it should be locked solid — and the multipoint lock on the active panel misses its keeps. Servicing the flush bolts and astragal and re-aligning the lock hardware makes both panels close, lock, and seal as one unit again.
The seals around exterior French doors harden and compress over time, especially on sun-facing walls. The symptoms are drafts you can feel, daylight showing at the meeting stile, and water finding its way in during heavy rain. Weatherstrip replacement and threshold adjustment are part of the service, and they also take the rattle out of panels that move in the wind.
French doors are mostly glass, so a cracked pane or a fogged unit with a failed seal is a common call. Glass damage is assessed as part of the door service; where a panel needs replacing, that work is covered by our window glass replacement service.
This page covers hinged patio and French doors. For other door problems around the home, start with our door repair overview.
Two communities show the range of the work: door and window repair in Davie runs to oversized patio and French doors on the town's ranch homes, while door and window repair in Coral Gables is often wood French doors on Mediterranean Revival homes, where replacements answer to the city's design review. The range extends west to Southwest Ranches, where the ranch and estate homes run French pairs at the scale of their lots — wide openings to the terrace, and hardware that lives outdoors in the humidity.
Sliding Patio Doors
Many South Florida homes have patio doors that slide on rollers instead of swinging on hinges — and despite the similar name, they fail in completely different ways. Sliding panels are repaired through our sliding glass door repair service, including the rollers and tracks that make a panel hard to move. If your patio door swings open on hinges, you are in the right place here.
Common Questions
That is the classic sign of hinge sag, not a structural problem. It is a straightforward repair.
Yes, including the inactive panel hardware on double door sets.
Most of the time the lock itself is fine — the panel has dropped slightly on its hinges, so the latch and, on double doors, the multipoint lock no longer meet the strike and keeps squarely. Re-setting the hinges and re-aligning the hardware restores a clean latch in most cases, without replacing the lock.
Usually, yes. The inactive panel is held by flush bolts at the head and threshold, and those bolts corrode, stick, or drift out of alignment until the panel will not release. Servicing the flush bolts and the astragal normally gets both panels working again.
Yes — weatherstrip replacement and threshold adjustment are part of the service. Fresh seals help keep out drafts and wind-driven rain, which is why this comes up so often on exterior French doors in South Florida.
Get Started
Tell us what is going wrong and we will arrange a time to assess it.
Phone: (305) 833-9474
Email: service@lmsolutionsfl.com
Check coverage on the service areas page.
