You will do better IMHO to take a golf tee or several toothpicks
and a bit of Elmer's glue. Glue the wood in the wallowed out
screw holes, reinstall the screws. If you close the holes with
the golf tees you might need to drill a lead hole for the screw.
______________________________
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)




wrote in message
oups.com...

wrote:

Not much of a carpenter, but I can follow directions. The front
door of
my mom's house has always worked perfectly. But my last two
visits, the
darn door will not latch when I pull it shut.

OP again. Turns out the little box "thing" (strike plate? LOL)
was
extremely loose. One screw wasn't holding at all....stripped out
and
the second screw was loose. So, I tried tightening it down, but
no
real luck.

I took it off completely and it now and latches fine in the
"open hole
in the frame." But it is really loose and moves back and forth
quite a
bit. So, the new plan is to go back tommorrow with longer
screws and
my electric drill and a grinder bit and grind a bit of steel off
the
strike plate thing and then try to tighten down well with the
longer
screws....sound reasonable?