Why Your French Doors Won't Close Properly

Hey guys, Sean with American Window Concepts, and today I'm gonna answer a question that I get a lot about. How do you adjust a French door? Let's do it. Not all French doors are going to be like this. If you have a wood French door, chances are you're not going to be able to do this. If you have a, you know, a pull-off-the-shelf one from Lowe's or Home Depot, they're not gonna have these types of hinges. So that's gonna be something completely different, and there's no real fix for other than to pull the door and reinstall it properly. In this case, Anlin is what we're gonna look at, but Milgard and many others will also do the sashes that are, you can adjust with these adjustable hinges. So all you need is going to be a 316th Allen, and that will allow you to adjust the top, middle, and the bottom. The top and bottom hinge, what they're going to do is they're gonna take this sash here, and they're gonna move it like this inside of its opening. If it's rubbing at the bottom, we want it to, depending on how it's hinged, we want to lift up on it a little bit. If it's rubbing at the bottom long ways, like from here all the way to here, there could be a bow in the bottom where it's got a crown, right, where it's kind of got a hill in the center, and that's another issue. But if it's not really, maybe it's ever so slight, you can take this middle. There's a little cap here at the bottom, and I'll show you. You pull that cap off, and you take this and enter this up, and you turn it to the right, and it'll lift the whole door, okay? It doesn't lift it a ton, but it will lift it to allow it to come off of the track here. And I'm gonna show you how we do this. Right now, this door is set perfectly. So it's gonna open and close. I'll show you. There's no rubbing. There's nothing going on with this. So this isn't, this is good. Now let's throw it at a whack, right? So let me take this, and I'm gonna turn it. Turn to the left first. I got it bottomed out. Let's see what happens here. Okay. You can see what's happening is, is now my sash here is starting to strike the other side. So watch this. See how it's rubbing? Well, that's no good, right? If you're at home, and you're trying to close your door, and it's smacking at the top, and it's starting to kind of grab at the bottom a little bit, well, that's no good. That's way out. I'm gonna show you. All you gotta do is go to the right. Now what it's doing is when I'm turning it towards the right, it's bringing this in closer. It's taking this sash and bringing it this way. When I went the other direction, it was sending it away. Okay? So let's go back. There we go. Now let's play it by ear. Let's see how this works. And look, nice and clean again. So dealing with the center hinge, which is gonna lift the door sash up or down. To get this little cap off, and I'll show you what it is, you just take a flathead. I like this like a smaller flathead. There's a little gap here. You just grab it, pull it, and there you go. There's your plug. You can see how it has little indent where you can put something flat and pry it out. Now, I turn it to the left, right? It should start to drop my door. And you gotta keep going, pull it out, reset it. Now, left should be dropping it lower and lower. So I'm gonna pin this thing all the way to the floor. And let's see what it does to the operation of my sash here. Let's get this door to open. Little bit of rubbing there at the bottom now. Yup, the gap has changed at the top. So to fix this, just do the reverse of what I was doing. I was going left, now we're gonna go right. So right is going to lift it. So it's light at the moment. There it goes, now it's starting to bite. So now it's starting to lift my door. You just keep doing this. Let's try that. Look at that. Check the gap. Oh, that looks good. I might give it a couple more turns, but it looked way, way better than what it did. Because it was off. Oh yeah, that's money. And then you just take this little plunger, put it back in and just set it. That is it, okay? So like I said, the top and bottom will allow the sash to move. And then you have this guy, which is going to lift it up or down. That is true for Anlin's side lights. They're actives, they're inactives, all of it. It's all adjustable, it's amazing stuff. Hopefully you guys found this helpful and make it a great day. Hey guys, if you live in the Ventura or Long Beach area and are interested in a free in-home estimate, go to our website, americanwindowconcepts.com and we'll reach back out to you as soon as possible. If you guys find this information valuable and you wanna continue to learn more about windows and doors, subscribe to our channel. Thank you so much.