Answer first: A door that won't close is almost always a settling symptom, not a hardware problem. Piers under your home settle at different rates on Marion County sand, the frame twists, and door openings rack out of square first because they are the tightest-tolerance parts of the structure. The fix is a relevel by a state-licensed installer (s. 320.8249, F.S.): jack, re-shim, re-block, re-read. Typically $450 to $900, in writing before work starts.
Why the door tells you before anything else does
A door frame is built to a tight tolerance, usually less than a quarter inch of play around the slab. Floors can slope an inch before anyone notices while standing on them, and drywall can crack quietly behind furniture for months. A door has nowhere to hide that kind of movement. The moment the frame around it twists even slightly, the top corner and the bottom corner stop being square to each other, the latch and the strike plate stop lining up, and you feel it every single time you walk through.
That is why the bedroom door won't latch anymore while the bathroom door across the hall swings open on its own. They sit over different piers. One side of the home settled more than the other, the frame twisted between the two openings, and each door reports the twist in the direction it happened to rack. Two different symptoms, one shared cause.
What we check before touching a door
We do not start by planing a door or moving a strike plate, because that treats the symptom and leaves the cause underneath. First we read level along the full frame and find the piers that dropped. If the readings show the opening racked from settling, releveling is the fix and the door work is unnecessary once the frame is true. If the door itself is also worn, swollen from humidity, or has a loose hinge unrelated to settling, we tell you that plainly instead of billing a relevel it does not need.
| What you notice | What is happening under the home | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Door won't latch, needs a shove to close | Frame racked, opening pinched narrow on the latch side | Relevel; re-read to confirm square |
| Door swings open on its own | Frame racked the other direction, opening now leans off-plumb | Relevel; check hinge wear after |
| Door sticks worse in summer, frees up in winter | Seasonal settling on top of humidity swell, both stacking on the same twist | Relevel timed ahead of the wet season |
| Cracks reappear over the door frame after patching | Frame still twisted; drywall keeps re-cracking along the same stress line | Relevel first, then patch once, not repeatedly |
Sticking doors rarely travel alone
If one door is racked, the rest of the frame is usually moving too, even if nothing else has announced itself yet. It is common on the same visit to find a sloping hallway floor, a marriage-line crack starting on a double-wide, or piers that need more than a re-shim. See the full picture on the releveling page: how a level home becomes a crooked one, what the visit looks like step by step, and the cadence that keeps it from happening again. If the inspection under the home finds cracked pier caps or sunken pads, that becomes a pier and blocking repair, quoted separately and shown to you in photos before you decide anything. If floors near the door feel soft or the room smells musty, the vapor barrier is worth checking on the same trip; it rides free with any level visit.
Full pricing detail, including what pushes a job over the base range, lives in the cost guide.