Doors, warping, locks sticking and general muppetry..

[Sirbendy]

Just bought a house...it's nice enough. However, Previous owner had:

a) A nailgun fetish
b) A lack of common sense sometimes.

All doors are quite new..stained to look older. ALL are warped, bowing in the middle. Some catch on the top of their frames, some catch on the back creaking and cracking. Most spring open unless firmly latched.

The strip that sits round the doors that they close onto in the bathroom in particular has a dog-leg bend in the bottom, so the bathroom door is a sod to close.

All the doorhandles are round, too close to the frames (fingers!), and bind/stick badly...the latches rarely pop back out. Some of the striker plates need moving as well.

Now, here's where I need advice from the good people on here..what tools would be most effective/needed to resolve these issues?

I'd guess at:
Sandpaper
Wood plane
Small chisel

to sort the frames out and give the doors some closure..

But what on earth can I do about sticky latches? I've tried WD40 - no go. Doorhandles came off the bathroom last night - stiff to turn, so I greased them...better, but not good enough..

The bathroom "vacant/engaged" lock was jammed solid..took it off, greased it..nothing. Looked at the rear section, realised it was screwed to the door so tightly (or possibly wrongly installed) that the moving disc was pinned in place. Sigh.

And lets not mention the wood trim that's been nailgunned to the doorframes...argh..or the shelves nailgunned to the wall...

 

[misterhelpful]

I would suggest that first of all you remove the door stops (strips that doors close onto). This will allow you to see if the doors will close and sit flush to the door linings. For the doors that don't close you can then mark them and plane where necessary.
Unfortunately, warped doors are often the result of poor storage prior to hanging and are difficult to rectify. If they are particularly bad then replacement is often required.

Doors that spring or bind on the hinge side often do so as a result of the hinge being let-in to the door/frame to deeply. This can often be resolved by packing the hinge/s with thin pieces of card.
Latches can stick as a result of the hole/s being drilled off square/level, or on occasion, too small, which causes the lugs to bind. You can usually solve this by levelling the hole with a mallet and chisel or carefully enlarging the hole slightly with a drill.
The discs on the handle can be freed up somewhat by enlarging the hole for the spindle.
Receivers/strike plates are easily moved if still out of line after completing the above.
(These are typical problems associated with the cheap bulk buy handle, hinge and latch multi-packs.)

Once you have got all doors swinging and closing freely, you can then re-attach the doorstops, if salvagable, or replace with new.

Hope this has helped a bit.

 

[foxhole]

You will need to change handles for lever type or change all the catches to deeper type which will probably make a mess of the doors, screws put in to deep or tight on the catches will also cause them to bind.
From description doors may not be badly warped just badly fitted which can give the impression they are warped.