A door that suddenly won't latch, or a window that's hard to open, is often blamed on humidity or an old frame. Sometimes that's right — but it's also one of the earliest visible signs of foundation movement.
A door frame is built square, and the latch, hinges, and gap are all set for that square shape. As the slab or pier-and-beam system beneath it tilts — even by a fraction of an inch — the frame racks slightly out of square along with it. The door itself hasn't changed; the opening around it has, which is why planing down the door rarely fixes the problem for long.
Both can make a door stick, so the pattern matters more than any single incident:
If it fits the second pattern, it's worth having the elevation measured rather than continuing to plane the door every season.
If the cause is foundation movement, the frame itself isn't the real repair — the foundation underneath it is. Once the section is piered or pier-and-beam repair is complete, the door is typically rehung to the now-level frame rather than replaced. If there's a visible crack at the frame corner too, that often gets sealed in the same visit.
A door that sticks seasonally and frees up again later is usually ordinary wood swelling from humidity, not a foundation issue. A door that sticks worse every year, or never fully stopped sticking, is the pattern worth having checked.
Exterior doors and doors near the corners of the house tend to show foundation-related sticking earliest. Several doors sticking on one side of the house at once is a stronger signal than a single door anywhere in the home.
Usually not. Once the underlying settlement is corrected, most doors can simply be rehung or have their frames adjusted rather than replaced, since the door itself was rarely the problem.
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