After only a few weeks of living in the new house, I had HAD IT with the door that goes from the laundry room into the garage. We use this door like 20 thousand times a day, and the door had self-closing hinges.
These door hinges are seriously the most annoying door hinges in the history of ever. Okay, okay, I’m being a little dramatic, but seriously, I hate them. Every time I’d quickly run into the garage to grab something, the door would slam itself shut behind me. Seriously drove me batty.
We tried propping the door open for a week or so but it was still so irritating. Also, the door is filthy and needs to be painted. Yuck.
So of course I bought new hinges and replaced them! I purchased some basic hinges made for exterior doors.
Replacing door hinges is super easy. It doesn’t matter if you are doing external or internal doors, you can swap them out really easily.
The easiest way is to replace one hinge at a time. You don’t need to take the whole door down, just remove one hinge and replace it with a new one, then do the next one, and finally swap out the final one.
This took me about 10 minutes. Not only do I have a door that actually stays open now, I also have chrome hardware instead of the gold. I’ll be replacing all the hardware in the house over time so eventually it’s all chrome.
Obviously this is a personal preference for me. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who love having the door self-close. It is definitely useful to have the door close by itself if you have pets or kids who never close doors! But for us, we like choosing to leave the door open if we want to.
We are loving not having the door slam in our face. And I really love chrome!
Seriously, that’s how easy it is to replace hinges. No door removal or anything. Such a simple and inexpensive update to a dated home.
This makes me laugh, because when we moved into our current rental, it took us about a year to remember that self closing hinges existed, and I made my husband put one on our basement door to keep the baby safe – we were terrible at remembering to close the door and he is super curious about the stairs. We felt like such geniuses for even thinking of it! Hahaha. But I can see how it would also be annoying, especially with a door that you use that often!
FWIW, self-closing, metal, solid doors are part of the residential fire code for any door from the garage to the house in Michigan. Which isn’t to say we didn’t change them out, but…
Really!?! I’ve never heard of this! I’ve lived in MI all my life and never seen a house with a self closing door!
So…this may be a dumb question but…do all door hinges have the same “footprint” of where the screws are? I’d love to replace all mine with ORB but was wondering…
Not a dumb question at all! Not all hinges are created equal. Some are rounded, some are square, some have holes in different spots. However, the majority of interior hinges seem to match up pretty well. I always take a hinge with me to the store and find a replacement that matches up so I don’t have to worry about drilling new holes or the plates not being the same shape or size.
A self closing door would drive me BATTY! Good color choice! Why do all my hinges, knobs, faucets, ceiling fans, and so on have to be gold in my new house??? This will be a lifelong project switching over. I’m not going to be talking my husband into renting scaffolding to deal with a fan 20 feet off the floor any time soon. …Or swapping bathroom fixtures. Everything will have to wear out and die first. : )
Thanks for the info. I’ve always removed the door and disliked the whole process because of it. This sounds so much more pleasant.
Where we live it’s part of the fire code to have a self closing garage door. But ours is a hinged piece up at the top of the door- kind of like what a lot of screen doors have. It stays open when you push it all the way way open, but closes behind you with a little nudge. It’s the best of both worlds!
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I need to take an apartment front door off to move furniture. However, the hinges are quite old and have caps on both ends. These are heavy duty caps that almost appear welded. However, The top hinge shows the pin, while the bottom hinge is completely enclosed. Does anyone know how to remove? Thanks!
Do you also remove batteries from smoke detectors because they drive you batty? Important safety code that doors between house and garage are fireproof and remain closed at all times.
I decided to change my hinges after replacing all the door knobs. The “one hinge at a time” method worked for me on the first door. The second door no longer closes and appears to be leaning a fraction of an inch! What did I do wrong?