Smitty Two wrote:

In article ,
Bob M wrote:

Gentlemen;

About a year ago I had a contractor install a new steel, prehung exterior
door. Although I don't know the brand, this door was most likely
obtained
at Home Depot. There appears to be nothing wrong with the quality of the
door and its surround.

I am trying to sell this home and the inspector states the door is in
need
of adjustment but was not specific. I looked and looked and the only
issue I could find was that compared to other doors in the house it
appears to be
set more deeply into the opening as seen from the inside. This means
that when closing the lock bolt hits the 1-1.5" of trim edge before it
reaches the strike plate.

This has never been a problem for me as I relatively effortlessly pull
the
door closed just fine. Apparently the potential purchaser has a
different idea!

As I am not a carpenter I am hoping that some of you readers who may be
familiar with installing/repairing similar doors might have an idea as to
what I am describing and even more hopefully how it can be repaired? I
am hesitant to call even a contractor because I don't even know how to
best describe it.

Does the door need to be reinstalled? If so, in what way? I can't
imaging the door could be incorrectly sizes as it looks just fine.

Any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, help GREATLY appreciated. As
one can imagine, in this housing mess and economy I am already taking a
real bath on this house.

Thanks - Bob

Since the potential purchaser is apparently the one squawking, why not
offer him $200 and let him fix whatever he and the inspector believe to
be wrong?

One thing you could check is whether the hinges have metal spacers
behind them, if so, removing one or more of them might help. We recently
tore down a wall containing a double steel door, in order to bring in a
large machine, and rebuilt the wall and door thereafter. Getting the
doors to work flawlessly wasn't difficult, but it was damn
time-consuming and fiddly, involving multiple iterations of "try it and
see."

Another possible issue is that the hinges could be in the wrong place,
so that the hinge side of the door contacts the stop before the latch
side of the door does, which puts torque on the hinges every time you
pull the door closed. We just ran into that yesterday on another door
whose hinge bolts had broken loose from the concrete block wall behind
the jamb.

Thanks for the input Smitty Two. The purchaser is being unreasonable and
won't settle for a cash allowance (lazy I guess). I will look for hinge
shims and bring a big hammer. Unfortunately the house is 300 miles away.

Bob